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Charlton Athletic's Simon Church writes for the KM Group

Simon Church (Pic: Keith Gillard)
Simon Church (Pic: Keith Gillard)

It’s been a great week from a personal point of view, and to follow up my success for Wales with a goal against Blackburn on Saturday was obviously a fantastic feeling.

It was great to get the nod to feature for my country and play in two massive matches.

Anyone who watched my celebration against Macedonia will know how much it meant to me and my country.

It was a great win on a great night in Cardiff and to follow that up by fighting back for a point against a Belgium side among the favourites for the World Cup capped a good few days.

Hopefully we can move on from those foundations when the European Championship qualifying campaign starts next year.

After linking back up with Charlton, I went into the weekend game at Blackburn in fine spirits and was delighted to play my part.

The Championship is a tough league and whoever we play against, it’s going to be a tough game. But it’s all about learning from our mistakes, and I think we’ve done that.

We started the season quite slowly and the last couple of matches we’ve really gone back to basics and defended well. It’s just a case of getting in front and staying in front.

After picking up a clean sheet against Blackpool before the international break we were top-notch again at Ewood Park. We were really solid and obviously the most important thing was the three points.

From a striker’s point of view it’s always great to be scoring goals. That’s my main job and my last goal before the one for Wales was in the abandoned game against Doncaster so it’s great to be back among the goals and hopefully that will continue.

When we had our tricky recent run, the manager was brilliant. There was no panic around the team and he’s instilled confidence into us – it’s a really positive place to be and it showed. That feel-good factor will hopefully continue on Sunday when we welcome Wigan to The Valley.

The club have been running a special Football for a Fiver promotion, with supporters also donating an extra pound to charity, so it’s a great price for a great cause.

It’s also going to mean a bumper crowd and a terrific atmosphere, something us as players always relish. The fans have been brilliant this season, so let’s hope we give them a performance to savour.

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