The KM road trip

Welcome to my new Gills blog. Please feel free to comment...

Saturday’s game in Calais had farce written all over it from the moment a story appeared on Gillingham’s website telling fans that there was confusion over the kick-off time.
Gillingham thought it was 3pm and Calais were advertising it as 5pm. Something had to give but apparently calls were still being frantically made to France at midnight Friday with no joy.
It was still game-on though so our little party, complete with Mark Bentley, who was unable to join the squad until Saturday, got ourselves comfortably seated on the P&O ferry while the Gills media man Martin tried his hardest to get a kick-off time confirmed.
We eventually got it nailed down for half 3. But it was later to transpire that Calais knew nothing of this.
Last year we had Josh Gowling for company on the way home from France, as he needed to be back in the UK early, and I think news has filtered through that travelling in the kmfm-branded car is the place to be!
I didn’t charge Benno for the crossing but he has promised me he’ll take over duties writing the column in the Medway Messenger this year. He’ll probably be regretting asking for a lift now.
Last season John Nutter did the honours, and Benno has big boots to fill. Nuts wrote every word himself for last year’s column and I just needed to sort out the spelling. Quite a task during the week he lost the “P” button from his keyboard!
I hope you’ll enjoy what Mark has to say. He’s one of the long servers at the club now and he’s a really likeable lad. Hopefully he’ll give a different aspect on things throughout the season. On Saturday he was telling us about a former non-league manager who got so angry he nearly knocked himself out after head-butting the dressing room door. Let’s hope Hess doesn’t get so excited this season.
After getting off the ferry we took a detour to the ground when Benno thought he saw some floodlights but as we wound through a housing estate we were forced to resort to using the sat-nav. If anyone used the directions supplied on the Gillingham web-site then I feel for them. I doubt they would have made it.
We were first to arrive at the ground and there was no sign of life. After a scout around we found the groundsman, who kindly made us all coffee and handed out “I love RUFC Calais” t-shirts. I’m not sure Benno was too impressed with his.
The wait continued and when someone other than the groundsman turned up we managed to agree that there was no agreement over a kick-off time. Finally when their manager turned up he made some hasty phone calls and all credit to them, there was a team for a 4.10 start.
Shame nobody told the fans or stewards who dribbled in mid-way through the game.
The Gills fans had sat patiently watching an extended pre-match warm-up, though no doubt they were happy to have beaten the ticket-man to the ground and got in for free. I’m sure though Calais made enough money on the bar to make up for that.
The visiting fans certainly enjoyed themselves. Yes it was a farce but nobody seemed to care.
The game itself wasn’t much of a spectacle, ruined by niggly fouls, dissent, an over-weight and officious referee and a Calais side unable to compete. 4-0 and a good work-out.
While the Gills players went off for a night-out on the town the fans weaved their way back to the ferry terminal, happy they got to see a game, some goals and plenty of French lager.

...more tomorrow...