Read the Chairman's Notes for the Bristol City Sky Bet League 1 programme
Good afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls and a very warm welcome back to MEMS Priestfield Stadium, Kent’s home of Football, for today’s Sky Bet League one match against Bristol City. I would like to extend a warm welcome to the directors, coaching staff, players and all the supporters that have travelled up from Bristol today, and wish you all a sage journey home and the best of luck for the season ahead. Of course it is only just over three weeks since our opponents last visited Priestfield in the Capital One Cup and I would like to congratulate them on their midweek giant-killing exploits, hopefully we can pose them more of a challenge than Crystal Palace.Anyone attending our last home fixture against Brentford, or last week’s away game at Swindon Town, can’t fail to have been impressed by the level of grit, determination and tenacity shown by our players, in both performances. Naturally it is a horrible feeling to concede an injury time equaliser, as we did in the 1-1 draw with Brentford, but the more important fact is that for 90 minutes we outplayed, out-thought and outfought one of the pre-season promotion favourites.
Similarly our players showed tremendous resilience to come from behind, not once, but twice at the County Ground last weekend and, on reflection, I feel our performances deserved more than the point we took from each game. It was equally pleasing to see our three strikers open their respective accounts for the season, with Bayo on target against Brentford, while Keds and Cody scored the goals at Swindon. I’m sure all three will have set themselves personal targets for the season and we are very fortunate to have thee forwards of this quality on our books, I certainly wouldn’t like to predict which of the trio will be topping our goal-scoring table come the end of the campaign.
The restructuring of our sales floor continues to take shape and I would like to welcome our new Area Sales Managers Katie Rigg and Steve Randall who joined our commercial team this week. They will be travelling out into the county in the coming weeks to introduce themselves to our current clients as well as new businesses and if you would like to arrange an appointment or discuss any commercial opportunities with the club, call direct on 01634 350350 or mail the team at sales@priestfield.com
Finally today we say a fond farewell to two people that have given tremendous service to Gillingham Football Club over the past decade, namely Gills Megastore Manager Jo Barnes and our Head Groundsman John Plummer. I’m sure both have become familiar faces to many of our supporters during their time at the club and both Jo and John have played a vital part in our success over the past 10 years. They will be sorely missed and I would like to wish them every success in the future and we hope to see you back at Priestfield again, very soon.
The atmosphere for our last home game against Brentford was absolutely electric, due in no small measure to a rather interesting referring performance, and it would be great if we can replicate the passion and energy you brought to that encounter. So get behind the lads, make lots of noise and the wins will come.
Up The Gills
Paul D.P. Scally
Chairman