Peterborough United fans can celebrate a ‘Happy Charlie Lee Day!”

Eleven years ago today (April 25, 2009) Lee scored the goal in a 1-0 win at Colchester United which clinched promotion to the Championship for Posh.

It was the first time in 17 years Posh had reached the second tier of English football and now, as then, it was achieved with back-to-back promotions, this time under a young chairman in Darragh MacAnthony and a young manager in Darren Ferguson.

Lee arrived from Spurs in the summer of 2007 and was a big part of three promotions in four seasons. The fans loved him for his complete commitment, spectacular goal-scoring and his winning personality.

The reception he received from Posh fans when returning to London Road with Gillingham in April, 2014 (Ferguson had told him after the second promotion from League One in May, 2011 that he could leave) was a moment of great pride.

“I had some brilliant times at Peterborough and to get that reception was amazing. I will never forget it,” Lee said at the time. “I’d never had two sets of fans clapping me in the same game before.”

Lee was interviewed by Posh press officer Phil Adlam this week and inevitably that game at Colchester came up.

“I’d loved the season before when we went up from League Two,” Lee said. “And I was really confident we would go straight up from League One. I couldn’t understand why no-one gave us much of a chance.

“We were always up there and then we beat Leicester who were top of the league and I honestly felt we would go on and win the league. I was lucky enough to score in that game, but we had a couple of bad results in the run-in so we were soon concentrating on finishing second.

“I didn’t even realise that if we beat Colchester we could go up on that day. We were fighting with MK Dons for second. We played well and again I was lucky enough to score in the first-half and the goal really summed up the way we played.

“Russell Martin was right-back and he passed the ball to George Boyd who was very deep even though he was supposed to be playing up front.

“I was left-back, but I was suddenly the furthest man forward as I got onto the through ball. I put my head down and hit the ball as hard as I could and it flew in.

“I still wasn’t aware until about 10 minutes from the end that we could go up until Mark Yeates who was playing for them said ‘I think you’ve gone up.’

“I then heard MK Dons were losing so I didn’t go forward in the final minutes and just prayed that no-one else would score so I could claim to have scored the important goal!

“Actually I was just thrilled to get promoted again. The celebrations were fantastic after the game although we had to wait as MK finished about five minutes after us.

“We had a lot of great celebrations in my time there and that night was a special one.

“League One was full of top sides and players that season. The football played that season was better than the football we saw in the Championship the following season.”

Posh: Lewis, Martin, Lee, Morgan, Zakuani, Keates (sub Frecklington, 60 mins), Coutts, Boyd, Whelpdale, Mackail-Smith, Mclean (sub Batt, 89 mins). Unused subs: Westwood, McKeown, Green.