Brad Galinson is focused on Gillingham’s future both immediate and long term, which could see a return of women’s football to the club and new players coming to Priestfield.

Since his arrival, The Gills have been busy in the transfer market and that began with the introduction of Kenny Jackett and Andy Hessenthaler as Director of Football and Head of Recruitment and the the Chairman was quick to praise Neil Harris and his predecessor Paul Scally for that move.

“That was down to Neil and Paul,” he said.

“It’s really professional people that know the industry and know the people and are trusted. And they sort out and found what we consider to be the best professionals to run the football.”

“That’s not going to be dissimilar to our sales, our marketing, our security, our events – my whole corporate governance is to get really smart people that are very good at what they do and let them run the business and in truth football is not dissimilar to that.”

“Paul Fisher is remaining with the Club and will run all of the non-football operations which is actually immense and he’s very, very good at that and a good professional guy, Paul Scally is now a minority shareholder and a board member, and he remains an asset to the Club, he knows everybody, hes’ done it all and the idea is to use that expertise and passion to help make our Club successful – he’ll be a part of the Club for as long as he wishes or not whatever the case maybe!”

Mr Galinson is a Women’s Lacrosse coach in the States and he’s keen to build on the England Lionesses’ successes and once again have a women’s team playing at the club.

He told us: “We are committed to looking into Ladies football down the line which may well be more long term that I would like it to be. If we weren’t bottom of the table, it would become one of the highest priorities to bring in women’s football under our umbrella – it’ll be a short term to mid term thing as I think it’s important.”

“How it plays out? Who knows, but we definitely want to support women’s football, women’s sports and Gillingham is the place to have that.”

“While the growth here since the Lionesses won last summer is great and, in the States, as well, the sport is extremely popular and brings in huge crowds as well – it’s a huge source of growth, both business growth and fan and community growth.”

“If you think about it and it’s an obvious statement, but fifty percent of the population is women and fifty is men, so shouldn’t the resources of the community be fifty percent women’s football and fifty percent men?”

“It’s extremely important and I believe fair!”

Gillingham Women currently play their home games at Chatham Town Football Club having split from the men’s side during the pandemic.

A return to Priestfield could happen at some stage, but that seems to be some way off at present.

Meanwhile, Galinson has promised more fresh faces for the men’s team and is hoping to have more players onboard in the coming days:

“My message to everyone is that we are laser focused on the one thing that we need to do which is to stay in this division and we have to stay in the League, and we are doing everything we possibly can, hands on deck, to do that.”

“Anything above that for this season will be gravy – it’ll be great and is literally what everyone’s focus is on. Expect more signings before the end of the window – there will be more,” he added, “but I’m sorry but I can’t tell you about them today…”