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10 hours ago
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There is rarely a quiet evening in the Leaburn household, especially if Tracey is cooking jerk chicken. “She’s like a mother to everyone – I’m pretty sure some of the lads call her mum,” Miles Leaburn says with a laugh.
The Charlton forward is reflecting on his family’s unique position at the club. His father, Carl, played almost 400 games for them and remains a cult hero. Tracey, his mother, has been the head of first-team player care for a decade, and a couple of hours at the training ground in south-east London illustrate that she is the heartbeat of the League One club, who travel to the Championship side Preston in the FA Cup on Saturday.
“We have a lot of first-team players who come round for dinner – normally the ones who don’t have family round here,” she says. “That is not part of my job; that’s just me. The lads will hear I’m doing jerk chicken and it gives them somewhere to come. Rather than sitting in a flat on their own, it gives them another place that feels like home.
“I’ve always thought: ‘How would I feel if my son had to move up north when he was only 16?’ I’d want someone to look after him and care for him as if they were his parents. I worry about them – I don’t want them to be eating Uber Eats when they come to our club. I’d rather they come round and we help them.”
That assistance extends to providing a home for some of Charlton’s younger players, including the Jamaica international Kaheim Dixon, who joined in the summer and gets a lift from Miles to training every day.
“New players have come in from other clubs and they say that the people that have her role don’t do it in the same way,” Miles says. “My mum will go out with them and make sure they get the best apartment or show them where the shops are. She will also make sure their partners are looked after. I sometimes even see her walking around babysitting some of the players’ kids if they don’t have anywhere to take them for the day. She goes far beyond her role but she enjoys it too.”
Leaburn admits it was slightly embarrassing to have his mother around all the time when he broke into the first-team squad as a teenager. But having scored off the bench on his debut against Accrington in July 2022, before going on to register 14 goals that season, he quickly answered any suspicions of nepotism.
“At first there were people saying: ‘He’s only there because of his dad and blah blah blah,’” Miles says. “But that can be a motivation to show that I’m not just here because of him. Ever since I started scoring goals in my first professional season, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say: ‘He’s there because of his dad.’ Even he says that I have much more technical ability than him!”
Leaburn recently returned from almost a year out with two ankle injuries and a serious hamstring problem that required surgery. He followed up his first league goal of the campaign against Northampton just before Christmas with another against Cambridge and two brilliant strikes against high-flying Wycombe a few days later, including a sumptuous chip that went in off the crossbar.
That took his tally in the league for Charlton to 19 in 62 appearances – not far off the 53 his dad managed in 322. Leaburn Sr perhaps was not renowned for his clinical nature in front of goal but if any Charlton fans had been at the park near the Leaburns’ house last week then they would have seen him giving his son pointers about how to head the ball more effectively – a skill that he excelled in.
“He was just telling me about the dark arts and trying to protect myself,” says Miles. “Running in from the side and getting your arms up – all of that stuff. He said to make sure you’re never stepping back and approach the ball side on. It was an empty park because it was quite cold so I don’t think anyone saw us.”
With Miles 6ft 7in and potentially still growing, Tracey jokes that they are thinking of building a new door for their son, although the player hopes he has reached his full height. “I’m very tall now but I can still move,” he says. “But I just feel like it’s going to get to a point where I’m too tall. I think that’s why I’ve been doing well at the moment – I’ve got the big profile but people don’t expect that I can move my feet and do a couple of tricks.”
He appears equipped to follow in the footsteps of Charlton academy graduates such as Ademola Lookman, Ezri Konsa and Joe Gomez, whose pictures proudly hang in the club’s press room. Leaburn was in Chelsea’s academy between the ages nine and 16 before being released. Tracey, who organises the club’s annual PSA testing day after her father died from prostate cancer, says 24 clubs were in contention to sign him and Miles insists he chose Charlton because of the pathway the club gives to young players.
“I remember I got the news from Chelsea and literally the next day my mum was like: ‘Boom, we’re not going to wallow about. You’ve got trials here, here and here.’ The next day I was up on the astro out there trialing with Charlton. My mum was basically my agent.
“A big reason that I came here was the pathway that young players can have to the first team and I guess I’m more proof of that. At the moment there’s four of us who have come from the academy and what more could you want as a young player? Ever since I’ve come, the bond with the fans has been amazing and it helps you as a young player because you’re nervous. Fans chanting your name and even not getting on to you when you make a mistake – that gives you confidence as a young player to try stuff in games.”
