RETURNING Charlton defender Jonathan Fortune told of how good it feels to be back at The Valley after twelve months away from the club.

A combination of relegation and a serious Achilles injury led to Fortune’s contact being allowed to expire in the summer of 2009, leaving him without a club for a while.

After making a recovery the 30-year-old earned a deal with Sheffield United, though he was only able to make five appearances for the Blades before being released at the end of his deal in June.

But Addicks boss Phil Parkinson brought Fortune back to Sparrows Lane for pre-season trials and eventually signed him as August drew to a close.

And the man affectionately known by Reds fans as the man who sent local rivals Crystal Palace down in 2005 couldn’t think of a better place to get his career back on track.

He admitted: “It’s great to be back. I really needed to start playing again and this was definitely the right place to do that.”

On the reasons surrounding his departure from the club after ten years of service, Fortune added: “I wasn’t fit at the time.

“I was still injured while we were relegated, so unfortunately it didn’t work out.

“The new contract was meant to be there but it wasn’t there and so I was still out of contact coming into pre-season.

“There was an offer from Sheffield United so I had to go, really.”

Now having worked his way into Parky’s first-team plans in League One, Jonathan already feels settled in with the many new faces to arrive since his initial departure, saying: “The new faces are starting to settle in.

“Today [against Plymouth] the gaffer said the second half performance was the best we’d played so far.

“That’s the way we want to play and hopefully that’s the way we’ll play in the future. It’s onwards and upwards from here.

“We were gutted when their second goal went in because we were dominating the game and it was one of those matches where we really should have come away with the three points.

“But to show fight and get back a point from it, we’ll have to take that right now.”

One of Fortune’s other memorable moments in his initial spell in SE7 was his post-match punch on Alan Lee after Charlton had defeated Ipswich in December 2007.

As fate would have it, Lee challenged Fortune for a ball in the air on the very same Valley pitch little over a year later in the South London derby that put the defender on the shelf for the rest of the season.

Looking back, however, Fortune feels the injury was a freak accident for which Lee should take no blame at all.

He explained: “To be fair, Alan did nothing wrong. I jumped for the ball, so did he, there was nothing bad in the challenge and for some reason my Achilles ruptured.

“It was unfortunate. It was Alan there at the time but it could have been anyone.”