Catwank

Sat 22 Nov -  Bury 4 – 0  Gills

Well I’ve got to say I half expected us to lose at Bury in the League, having won there rather fortuitously in the FA Cup two weeks earlier for the first time (Gigg Lane) since 1985 – lightning doesn’t often strike twice but even I, the arch pessimist didn’t expect a 4-0 drubbing by a Bury side that had lost it’s last five home game and hadn’t won at home in the League since early September… still it pays never to expect anything other than disaster watching the Gills away from home.

Just Like The Old Days…

Sat 15 Nov -  Gills 4 – 0 Rotherham United

If you squinted a bit this felt like a decade ago, with the night drawing in, the opposition in disarray, the Rainham End baying for blood and four goals dispatched with gusto into the net you could have been mistaken Hessenthaler, Super Bob, Asaba, Smith and Ashby were still in their pomp. Sadly this is 2008 and a division lower and rather than the norm arguably the best home game of 2008 thus far. Still it was a thoroughly enjoyable romp which makes a change from low key narrow wins against plodding opponents.

The Luck of the Cup

Saturday November 8 FAC 1 – Bury 0-1 Gills

Oh fuck, fuck, fuck-ety-fuck. You could say I was not happy about the Cup draw. We’d speculated about who we might get the day before the draw and the common consensus was simple; the worst possible draws we could get were all in the North West, either distance wise (Barrow), for difficulty on the pitch mixed with travelling there (Oldham) and then oh boy oh boy it became glaringly obvious, a trip to Gigg Lane.

Not Pretty but Job Done…

Saturday 1 November – Macclesfield Town 0-1 Gills

If you needed one game to grimly illustrate that we are most categorically now in League Two this would be it. A modest but friendly ground in a modest but friendly town in the north west. It was cold, blustery and the game pretty dreadful in terms of quality and the atmosphere, well with a crowd of just 1,635 including 272 Gills scattered across an open terrace, it was non-existent. Still in these dark days you have to be a pragmatist and all we demanded from our long day out was a win. Fuck the pretty football, fuck the tippy-tappy bollocks of summer time dreaming of a push for the title on a wave of magnificent goals and crescendo of thrilling victories, we were simply chasing three point…

Really quite shit

Tue 28 Oct – Lincoln City 2 – 0 Gills

Moving swiftly on… nothing to see here people, nothing to see. No really it was all rather uneventful. A gold star to the 322 Gills fans that made the trip – no really! 322 Gills, I know it was half term but still a magnificent effort given it was midweek, the distance and our, ahem, away record plus the weather, more than Accrington, Morecambe and Chester have brought to Priestfield on a Saturday combined… Lincoln were “expecting 50 to 100” and had to hastily open up the back of the stand to accommodate the demand!!!

Hmmm….

Saturday 25 Oct – Gills 2 – 0 Chester City

I think sometimes Gillingham fans forget where we are and a significant minority appear to have caught (relative) “Massive-club” disease. The Chester game was a case in point, Chester were recently in the Conference, have a capacity of 5300, average around 2,000 and (not for the first time this season were on the wrong end of a drubbing) losing 6-1 at Rochdale  on the Tuesday preceding their first trip to Priestfield since 1996. The 4800 Gills fans that turned up were largely subdued and appeared to plonk themselves down in their seats demanding to be entertained and that Chester be ritually disembowelled. They wanted silky, flowing football, they wanted a romp, a rout, a drubbing, they demanded nothing less and some even expected it.

Ooh arr revisited

The following article, written by Alan Reidy, first appeared in the Tiverton Town programme on 28 October.

Some things are inevitable – as sure as night follows day follows night, as sure as Olaf Mellberg will scratch his beard during interviews, and as sure as Ashley Cole will be jeered by his own compatriots when representing England there is one little statistic centring around Tiverton Town FC that is seemingly as certain as a three inch putt for par on a flat green. Our leading protagonist in this story is Mark Saunders, the veteran midfielder that first played for Tivvy when footballs had laces in them and boots were made of leather. In a quest to get a little more insight I asked the man himself whether he kept tabs on his own career from a statistical point of view following our victory at Bashley at the weekend.