BELIEF was the key for City striker Chris Martin as the Canaries finally clinched promotion back to the Championship after a hard-fought win against Charlton at The Valley.

Norwich's 1-0 victory was enough to seal it, with all their promotion rivals dropping points over the weekend, and Martin who has chipped in with 22 goals so far this season was thrilled for everybody connected with the Club. 

"It was superb - the players, management staff and the fans are all delighted," he said. 

Asked to describe the mood in the dressing room after the all-important win, Martin said: "There's a lot of relief in there, I suppose because we've been there that long, just to get over the line it's relieving. Also joy after what happened here last year, everybody knows about it and we knew about it before the game and there's a few people who wanted to banish that from their minds and they've certainly done that today and it's credit to all the lads.

"We worked tremendously hard against a very good Charlton team. I think they had a lot of the play, everybody saw that. But our back five were tremendous, really soaked the pressure up well and we got the all-important goal with a great header from Nelse (Michael Nelson)."

Saturday's events realised the Club's aim of getting up at the first time of asking, something Martin said was a tremendous achievement: "I think we've had a very, very good season. We all knew that we had very good players, it was just a case of whether we could play together, play as a team and gel and we certainly did that.  

"We've been on some tremendous runs this year, but I think it shows over the last few games maybe a few nerves creeping in, a bit jittery, but it shows our character to come back from a result like Tuesday and come to Charlton and win and that has been key for us this season.

"To get it done with a few games to go as well is a big achievement  and we want to go and win the title. Obviously we need one more point so we've still got to achieve that, but full credit to everyone on getting us promoted and we're just glad to give the fans something back after the disappointment of last year."

Asked what the secret to Norwich City's success had been, Martin replied: "I think the whole time, everyone had the belief - the gaffer instilled it in us, he said he believed in us and that we could get promoted and that's exactly what we have done.

"We all knew it was going to be very tough and I think at one point we were 15 points behind the top team and everyone thought it was the impossible task. But we stuck together, went on a brilliant run of 17 or 18 games unbeaten which is phenomenal for every single one of us and I think every game we had to go into with belief and that's why we carried it on and the confidence grew and grew amongst the lads and the fans."     

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