Gills kick off their Merit League campaign in the best possible way after defeating Southend 3-2 at Beechings.
The Gills have qualified for Merit League 1 after finishing in the top half of the Youth Alliance South East Division, and they began the campaign with an impressive victory over the Seasiders last weekend.
Mark Moss talks us through the latest win....
“It was a pleasing result, and first-half performance, I was very happy. The only thing that let us down was our finishing as we made four or five really good chances and didn’t take them.
“We went in at half-time 1-0 up through a Josh Chambers free-kick; Will Dempsey hit the bar, had countless other chances with Kai and Matt.
“The second half turned into a bit of a basketball game; I was disappointed as we didn’t manage to control the game like I wanted us to and they equalized quite early on in the second half.
“Then we wrestled back control a little bit, Kai Garratt put us 2-1 up thanks to Matty’s cross, a good header. They made it 2-2 and then Kai won it with about 15 minutes to go.”
Jo Gbode was back with the youth team after competing a brief loan spell with Margate, as Mark explained:
“He started on the bench just because we felt it wasn’t right for him to go straight into the line-up having just come back, but he made an impact when he came on and held the ball up late in the game and assisted Kai’s winner.
“Josh Leach is still out with Erith and Belvedere. We do want the second years to go and get experience playing men’s Football, we are still looking at the options with those.
“Everyone else is back, Tom is technically still with Barking but he’s only going to play the midweek games.”
Gills: Crump, Giles, Carter, Gale, Dempsey, Chambers, E Smith, Kuhr, Hutcheon (Gbode), MacArthur, Garratt.
Unused subs: T Smith