Martin looks forward to Tuesday's trip to York
In a change to the norm the Gills squad are enjoying a five day break in Yorkshire this weekend and speaking after yesterday’s 1-0 win at Bradford Martin Allen explained how the trip came about, “Mr Scally asked us a few weeks ago if we’d like to stay up because of the long journeys and the travelling and also the fact that we’ve got some new players.“It’s a good opportunity, when we have new people along they have to sign on the Friday night. Last night was pretty good, Cody McDonald had to sing, Jake Hessenthaler is on our squad for this trip, he had to sing, Sam Muggleton had to sing last night and so did Anton Robinson, our Lionel Ritchie lookalike."
Spared a long coach journey home, Martin has planned a relaxing build up as the players prepare to face York on Tuesday night, adding, “Tonight we’re going to go to the pub for one hour but whatever happened at Bradford we were going to go anyway.
“Then we’ve got a Chinese takeaway being delivered to the hotel, I don’t think the hotel knows yet so they might not be too happy. Everyone will sit around the hotel together tonight, chill out and relax, feel good together and get to know each other a bit better.
“They’ll be no late nights, no one is allowed out of the hotel, we’ll be private and quiet. Tomorrow we’ll have a leisure club morning with a swimming pool then we head to the other hotel and tomorrow night we’re all going to the pictures.
“They’ll train Monday, sleep Monday afternoon, then I think we’ll play board games on Monday night. We train Tuesday morning then pick a team for the York game. That’s the plan of action and Mr Scally has come over from Dubai to be with us for a couple of days and it’s good to see him about.”
Martin added development squad players Sam Muggleton and Jake Hessenthaler to his squad for the away fixtures and has high hopes for the pair, saying “Our reserves played on Tuesday and I went to watch that, they were losing 2-1 with twenty minutes to go, Sam Muggleton came on as a substitute and they scored three goals so it’s an absolute no brainer.
“I watch all the young lads, I know what they’re doing and the best player in the game on Tuesday was Jake Hessenthaler, so I brought him along to experience this. They’ve been working so hard and they are fit and strong, so we’re bringing them on these trips to see what it’s all about.
“We haven’t got that many players now, Danny Kedwell’s hurt his hamstring so he wasn’t available so the young boys are going to have to step up, step in and be part of it, which is great for them and I hope, in the long term, they will be the future.”
The win at Bradford was the Gills record equalling tenth league triumph away from home, now Martin is determined to put right the home form as well, “It was lovely to see all those supporters at the far end happy because there’s nothing worse than that Monday night at home, when we don’t win in front of our home fans, I hate it. So we’ve got to keep going away from home and work some of our mad magic to find out what we need to do to win at home.
“We want to hammer that record don’t we? We don’t set out to break a record but it’s nice to be part of the history of the football club and without a shadow of a doubt we can be record breakers. So of course that’s special, it was special to equal it and it will be brilliant when beat it.”