Ahead of this week’s shareholders meeting at MEMS Priestfield, Gillingham Managing Director Joe Comper has been reflecting on the season so far with KSN and the changes that he has seen in his time at the Club. 

Speaking to us before the meeting, Comper told us, “It is crazy to think just how much this place has changed in the last three years. I joined just after COVID and it was tough – a Club that was constantly firefighting and I don’t want to blame any one individual for that, I think it was just where it was with regards to the fan-base, within the Club I think that there was almost a feeling of being on a hamster wheel, like you can run harder, but you are not necessarily further.”

“You can talk about the staff; you can talk about the players and manager… but the two people responsible for injecting life into this place are Brad and Shannon Galinson – that is the fact of it.” 

“There are also a lot of people around them and under them who deserve credit, but ultimately, they have not just brought money to the Club, they have brought a smile, they have brought belief, they have brought integrity and trust and everything at this Club is now moving forward, and the culture is changing because of the two people at the top of it!”  

“I do have to admit that the way people have taken to what we are doing has surprised me to a certain extent! We knew that the Club could grow in terms of the engagement, we knew where it had been and with of bit of TLC and maybe a different way of doing things and a bit more engagement with the fan-base, you would get the buy in!”

“I personally have been surprised by the level of that buy-in – but I think people can see that it is authentic. Brad and Shannon are honest and trustworthy as when they say they are going to do something, they do it!”

“The football last year didn’t go as well as we hoped, but we have only gained support and gained season ticket holders because I think people have gone “well OK we can see that they are trying to do the right thing with no guarantees on the pitch, they have made guarantees off it which have been met.” 

“We are all pleased with the start to the season, aren’t we? One of things that we are most pleased with is that after doing everything early in the summer so that we could get organised and hit the ground running, it’s panned out well, but we are under no illusion that it is not job done yet!”

“There is a long way to go… we are very pleased and very happy and could not have asked for much more. But it is only a start!” 

“Off the field, we have had a really good response – we set ourselves really ambitious targets commercially in terms of sponsorship and advertising – I am talking about three times as much as when I first arrived at the Club three years ago – and we are well on course to hit them, if not exceed them which is unbelievable.”

“We sold more season tickets than we budgeted for; matchday tickets as it stands, we are over what we budgeted for; so far so good, but we know that those levels will dip off if the football dips off as well!” 

“If you look at the shirt sales, they are amazing! Last year, we had a huge growth in shirt sales which caught us out a little bit – this year we felt as though we had a bit more of an estimation as we knew what the interest was… last year we sold five and a half thousand shirts which meant that this year that was our starting point in the ordering.”

“The Green and the Yellow in particular have gone really well – we knew the yellow would go well, but the Green was one we hoped people would take to and how they have… We ordered five and a half thousand and there’s another fifteen hundred arriving this month, and if we get through them where current sales suggest we will, to sell seven thousand shirts is unbelievable for a Club like Gillingham.” 

“We actually have been to see the suppliers in Italy already, and the reason for that is simple. Someone actually asked me why are you going in October to do that?”

“Well, if you think about it, with seven thousand shirts with the leisure wear and the training wear on top of that, it is a huge business now.”

“You are talking about hundreds of thousands of pounds of income for the Club – we spent about twenty-four hours there in total and we sat with the designers, tweaking certain things and look at the detail alongside all the options for leisure wear and training wear – if we like this or don’t like that, can we get that in a different colour… That has hopefully set us up already for next season.”

We asked for any clues onto the next kit, and Mr Comper said politely, “No, but there’s likely to be some blue in the home kit,” he added laughing! “The shirts cannot be ordered in May and turn up in June, which is what some used to think” 

“It is the supporters “job” to enjoy what’s happening in the here and now, but it is my job to plan for if we finish top of the League or if we finish twelfth, what are we going to do, and it’s the same with the staff – it’s our job to plan ahead, to plan for every eventuality – we are already looking at half season tickets for after Christmas after the ticket office manager Ben came to us to discuss the option – it’s brilliant that the staff are starting to have that mentality that we want to be ahead of the game, as we want to be organised… and the fans see that – they loved the fact that the shirts were on sale in May – it is a huge change from when I first started here.” 

Picture supplied by Gillingham Football Club.