Saturday 27th October 1984 was my first ever visit to Priestfield, on a rare Saturday off work for my Dad he took me and my cousin Mike to the Third Division match against Bradford City.
We caught the train up from Bromley South and walked through the roads of tightly packed terraced houses until we saw the floodlights and eventually found our way to pay at the turnstile and sit in the old wooden Gordon Road stand.
I was 13 and it was all very exciting, although I’d been regularly watching Bromley for a few years play in the Isthmian League, this was back in the days when they got a few hundred at Hayes Lane and The Ravens were nowhere near the Football League.
In fact the only professional game I had seen before this was a friendly between Portsmouth & Chelsea when we were on holiday at Southsea back in 1978. There was so much crowd trouble that day that we had to leave before the end on police advice! It was a million miles away from the match day experience at Hayes Lane.
I’d been fascinated by the massive floodlights you could see from the train at Gillingham when going to the coast and my Dad had promised we could go to a game there when we got the chance.
I don’t remember too much of the game other than that it ended 2-2, Tony Cascarino scored, we’d seen him play for Crockenhill against Cray Wands not that long before, and although the crowd was 3,896 it seemed much bigger to a kid who was used to attendances of around 250/300.
Almost thirty nine years later (blimey!) history repeated itself, as I took my 13 year old son to his first Football League match at Priestfield to see The Gills play MK Dons. His interest in Gillingham had come from playing as them on FIFA, finding out at the time they had two ex-Bromley players in the team in Brandon Hanlon & Josh Rees and also that it was only half an hour away by train.
I’d promised to take him to Gillingham a while back, but reporting on Bromley & Cray Wanderers games for KSN leaves little scope for free Saturdays, until this week when Cray were drawn away in the FA Trophy and Bromley travelled to York City in the National League. A quick look at The Gills website confirmed they were at home and tickets were available, so it was game on.
Fair play to Gillingham the process of buying tickets off the website was very smooth and it actually worked out the same cost as Bromley! £22 for me and only £7 for Mikey to sit in the main stand, I even got to pick our seats in the main stand, (although it turned out I didn’t choose very well!).
We followed the same route as I did back in 1984, getting the train from Bromley South to Gillingham and walking up to the stadium. I knew he’d want to visit the club shop, so I allowed a bit of extra time and money in my wallet!
We made our way up from the station, noting that the Southern Bell pub where Bromley fans had gathered back in 1992 for the pre-match meet prior to the Kent Senior Cup Final was still open.
Going past the Sainsbury’s Local that seems to do very well out of Gills games and round the corner to the main stand, but on arrival at the ground we found that the ‘Mega Store’ was shut. We hung about until 2pm just in case it opened then, but the shutters stayed down, slightly disappointed we headed inside.
Being a dinosaur it’s still strange for me to have the tickets for a game on my phone, but it all went very smoothly and with plenty of time on our hands we decided to pick up the excellent programme and check out the catering options.
The headline news was no chips, or burgers for that matter, but the sausage roll was nice and Mikey enjoyed his footlong hot dog a lot, the prices weren’t too bad either, this plus two bottles of drink was £12.50.
We were in Block A at the end of Row G, close to where the players come out, which was a great spot apart from the fact we had to look through a barrier to see the Rainham End goal, but if you moved around in your seat you could see everything just about.
The wee man was very impressed with the stadium as a whole, it occurred to me that none of the ground was the same as when I had first visited, or when Bromley had won the Kent Senior Cup here in 1992 and Cray Wands the Kent Senior Trophy a year later, all four sides had been re-built during the mid to late 90s.
With the sacking of Neil Harris in the week prior to the game there was extra interest in how things would be and also the strange coincidence that Bromley’s manager Andy Woodman was currently 6/1 in the betting to be the new Gills boss, having previously been linked with the job before Harris’ appointment.
I was interested in getting Mikey’s perspective on how the standard of League Two football compared to the National League, with Gillingham and MK Dons both towards the top of the table we knew it would be a decent game.
By the time the game kicked off with 6,119 punters in attendance the atmosphere was really good, on an unseasonably hot October day. MK Dons fans, housed partly in the ‘temporary’ stand behind the goal and also in two blocks of the Gordon Road stand, did their best to be heard, while home fans in the Rainham End made a healthy racket.
The match got off to a frantic start and the intensity of the play didn’t really let up all afternoon. Ethan Coleman was the only ex-Bromley player on show today and having impressed at Hayes Lane on loan last season from Orient, he looked a very decent player in the Gills team.
Interim manager Keith Millen had obviously told the players to be a bit more attacking and The Gills had the best of the early play. After Ashley Nadeson had gone off injured the introduction of Macualey Bonne proved to be pivotal to the home team making their dominance count as he scored the opening goal on 26 minutes with a great finish after winning the ball in midfield. I’d seen Bonne play for Orient in the National League and knew he was a very decent forward, but he looks to have got even better. Gillingham could have had more, but for some good goalkeeping from Craig MacGillvray in The Dons goal.
1-0 at half time and Grahm Alexander the MK Dons manager made two attacking changes introducing Jonathan Leko and Ellis Harrison, I remembered Leko from his time as a teenager at West Brom in the Premier League.
The away side now attacking the end we were closest to began to look danergous, but Jake Turner and his defence looked pretty solid. Ten minutes into the second half and The Gills were 2-0 up, Tom Nicholls dispossessed Leko in midfield and took the ball to the edge of the area before drawing the keeper and squaring it to Scott Malone to finish just inside the area and take the plaudits from the fans behind the goal.
The game then took a turn just after the hour as the home side sat back and MK Dons began to press. Turner made a couple of really good saves, before their visitors’ pressure paid off on 82minutes when Leko broke down the right and crossed for his fellow sub Harrison to powerfully head home and make it 2-1.
This made for a tense finish to the game, but after some more resolute defending and a bit of time wasting in the corner Gillingham held on for the win with The Dons’ Daniel Harvie getting a second yellow card in the six minutes of injury time as their frustration boiled over.
As the full time whistle went and we clapped the players off, Mikey said he’s really enjoyed the match and would like to come again one day.
When I asked him about the standard of football he said ‘intense’ and that Bromley would need some new players if they went up this season!
A quick walk back to the station saw us on the 5:30 back to Bromley, the MK Dons fans on there were dancing up and down the train doing a drunken conga, much to the confusion of non football going passengers and Mikey who didn’t understand why they were so happy as they’d lost!
All in all a really enjoyable afternoon’s football and one we’ll probably do again if we get the chance, I’ll just choose better seats next time!