PHIL Parkinson believes experience could prove the key factor for his side in Charlton’s play-off encounters with Swindon.

The Addicks travel down the M4 tomorrow evening for the opening leg against Danny Wilson’s team before completing the double-header in SE7 on Monday.

Charlton were able to retain the vast majority of the squad which was relegated from the Championship last May and Parky believes this fact, together with a few additions, may prove invaluable as the Addicks attempt to bounce straight back.

He said: “One thing we’ve spoken about after a lot of the games is the experience we’ve got in the squad with the likes of Frazer Richardson, Christian Dailly, Sam Sodje, Deon Burton and Nicky Bailey.

“They’ve been in these type of situations before and as a player, once you’ve experienced it you learn from it and we’ve got a lot of experience and character.

“I feel there is an air of anticipation in the squad and we are really looking forward to the challenge ahead.

“We’ve had a good run recently and going into the Oldham game we were conscious of the fact if results went our way, we could have got promoted.

“But more realistically our aim was to go into the play-offs in good form and also if we won the game, we knew we had a good chance of getting the second leg at home.

“We’ve achieved that and now we’ve got to make it count.”

Charlton came from behind twice to earn draws against Swindon during the League One campaign and Parky didn’t deny it might give his side a crucial psychological advantage.

The manager said: “It certainly won’t do any harm the fact that with nine-men we got a draw against Swindon and played very well on the day.

“Down at the County Ground for half an hour Swindon played very well and really put us on the back foot, but in the rest of the game we acquitted ourselves well and ended up with a very good draw, which was an important point at the time.

“We respect Swindon because they are a good side and have got some good players but equally there are areas we feel we can exploit.”

Swindon will undoubtedly be looking for prolific strike duo Billy Paynter and Charlie Austin to deliver the goods again but Parkinson is convinced his side can frustrate the pair.

He said: “They are two good players but we’ve got good defenders and I’m confident we can deal with their attacking threat.

“But it will be a challenge and like I said before the Leeds game, you’ve got to take yourself up to another level in terms of concentration in all parts of the game as a defender.

“When the ball is at their end, you’ve got to remain concentrating for the full 90 minutes against players of the quality of these two.

“But we’ve dealt with them not too badly before and I’m confident we can do it again.”

Despite the drama and excitement of the play-offs, the annual end of season lottery still has a minority of critics, although Parkinson isn’t one of them.

He explained: “I don’t think you can argue with the play-offs because they keep the season alive for so many teams.

“If you’ve seen the games already in the Championship, the drama is just incredible.

“As much as when they came in over 20 years ago people moaned about the play-offs, it just keeps the season alive for everybody.”

He added: “You look at our division and a lot of teams up until the last three or four games had a chance of getting in the play-offs, so we certainly can’t complain and it has given us another opportunity to finish the job off.

“It has been a very tight division if you take Norwich out of it.

“The rest of us have been very tight and you get to this stage of the season where there is little to call between the teams.”