LEON Cort believes Saturday’s battling display at Birmingham demonstrates Charlton have nothing to fear in the Championship.

The League One champions were competing back in the second tier of English football for the first time in three years at the home of opponents who last season reached the play-offs.

Charlton had a host of chances before defender Cort headed them in front in the 82nd minute.

And even though they were denied a deserved opening day success by Nikola Zigic’s 94th minute equaliser, the Addicks defender still took plenty of positives from the result.

He said: “Obviously before the game we might have said we would take a point and that would have been a great result.

“But I felt we were in the driving seat for long periods of the game today and we had a lot of chances, which we need to take heart from.

“All in all, you’ve got to say it was a good day for us.”

Cort added: “We to finish as high as we possibly can, we don’t want to be down there.

“I know people are tipping us to be fighting relegation but I believe if we can put on performances like today, you never know what can happen.

“It is a fantastic club – a great history, a great manager, a good set of players and the club is going in the right direction again.”

Cort’s goal was his first for the club and he is hoping it will be the first of many.

“It has been a long time in coming,” the 32-year-old said.

“I haven’t scored for a while so it is nice to get off the mark.

“It is early in the season and long may it continue.

“Everyone was on it from the start, no one was fearful.

“This is a tough place to come to and we showed what we could do.

“We can all compete at this level.”

But Cort did admit he was sure Charlton would hold on for all three points having got their noses in front at such a late stage.

“Definitely,” he said.

“We felt kind of comfortable, even though they were throwing forward bodies and had brought on Zigic, we felt our keeper didn’t have much to do today.

“But it is sod’s law, you always see it time and time again – if you don’t take your chances then teams usually get a chance and just take it.”

Follow us on Twitter @NewsShopperSprt