Defender Shad Ogie and his Gillingham team-mates return to SKYBet League Two action this weekend hopefully refreshed after their Saturday off last week and keen to build on their momentum.

Speaking to KSN at this week’s briefing, the young defender told us, “We need to build our momentum if we are going to challenge after beating Port Vale and it would have been good to have games quickly to try and build some.”

“Some people were expecting us to lose to Port Vale after our form wasn’t very good, but that win has really done us a lot of good and we must take that and build momentum going into Harrogate at the weekend.” 

“I feel like these games are very important as we don’t play much this month so we need to keep going getting the points as we go towards Christmas.”

“As players we want to play every week, but as it is we just have to be fully focused on whoever comes in front of us.” 

So, what do footballers do when they have a Saturday off? “A lot of the guys went back home,” Ogie told us, “We chilled with our families, taking our foot off the gas for a bit as we knew that we were coming back in on Monday to go full steam ahead for this weekend.”

“It was nice to turn off especially as personally I don’t look at other scores or the table too much.” 

Recently the Gills have been playing both skipper Max Ehmer and Conor Masterson alongside Ogie – a move that the youngster admitted was a good one, “I don’t really mind the formation! Whatever formation he plays, the Gaffer trusts us enough as players to adapt to it.”

“Mine and Conor’s biggest strengths I would say is stepping out with ball – picking passes, breaking lines – whilst Max undoubtedly is the experienced guy with no nonsense defending and he just sorts us out. It’s good to be alongside him!” 

“The new management has been like a breath of fresh air really with them knowing that I am still young. They have been very helpful to me and are helping me with my game – they call me in for meetings which really is beneficial for my game and it really helps me.” 

The last time the Gills faced Harrogate in early April, Stephen Clemence’s side led 1-0 at half-time only to lose 5-1. Ogie was asked about that collapse and he told us, “It’s done and dusted! All we could really do was to learn from it and see where the errors were made and how to fix that, and I feel like we have done that and hopefully that won’t happen again!”

“We know what type of team they are for this weekend – we have done some tactical stuff on them this week – we know what they will bring, we are not really focused on them as we know what we can bring to the game and with our abilities around the squad, we can take on anyone.”

“We now have healthy competition for every place in the team – the standards in training has got very high so it really is enjoyable at the moment.”