Today in our series celebrating the three weeks in 2000 when two Kent sides enjoyed success under the Wembley Twin Towers, KSN’s chief football writer Mike Green talks to the man whose header sent Gillingham to the Championship for the very first time. This is the first part of our conversation with the man himself ANDY THOMSON…
Twenty years – it’s a long time Andy admitted, “A lot has happened at the Club in those years – it feels like it happened just yesterday and was a great experience for everybody involved with the Club especially after what happened the previous year – it’s just incredible it’s twenty years ago!”
Twelve months earlier, Andy was a spectator when the Gills were beaten by Manchester City. He remembers: “I watched the game back in Scotland specifically as I knew Paul Smith quite well as he lived locally and we’d been out socially and got on really well with him and I was hoping he would win.”
“It was something that if it was in a film, you wouldn’t have thought it was real – it was just an incredible, incredible game and I was gutted for them. But it just shows you that fate has a funny way of taking part in these things – if they’d have won that day, I wouldn’t have chance a year later for the Club to have played Wigan, so maybe it was written.”
“So, I was absolutely gutted for Paul that that happened – an unbelievable game to watch!”
“I think I joined on the Thursday before the season started on the weekend, and they played Bury away on the Saturday – I played in the game and scored despite not knowing many of the players.”
“I trained with the lads on the Friday in Liverpool I think it was, but as soon as I met them, I had a real good feeling about them.”
“Firstly people see the players, but the biggest thing is personalities and character – I had a real good impression straight away and they made me very welcome and that was the standard for the season.”
“It was difficult start – we lost two-one – but I’d seen enough to think that we were going to do well and try and come back from what had happened the previous year as the vast majority of players were still in the team.”
The Gills that same season enjoyed their best ever FA Cup run as the club reached the last eight for the first – and so far only – time in the club’s history and Andy played his part.
“The Cup run was an incredible thing,” he told us, “as it ran alongside the League and affected bits and parts of the campaign – it was a great experience and we ended up playing Chelsea in the Quarter Final – we got beat five-nil, we did all right for all of five minutes!”
“Seriously, it was great for the supporters to go to Chelsea and facing a team who were spending big money at that point and the players did enjoy it and in the next game we went to Preston and won two-nil which summed up that season that the players could focus on a great Cup run and doing really well in the League after what happened the previous season.”
Andy missed a lot of the run in. “We played Bournemouth away and one of their defenders tackled me and missed the ball but caught my ankle and it was a really bad one,” Andy recalls painfully.
“As I was getting carried off, their fans thought I was wasting time – it was a bad injury and I don’t think that I played any of the games leading up to the Final – I was on the bench at Wrexham for the last League game, but don’t think I came on.”
“Peter (Taylor) asked me if I was fit enough and I told him of course I was!” Andy then admitted, “To be honest I still get problems from it to this day but it was well worth it to get to play at Wembley and get the team promoted and be part of that to take a “little” ankle injury along the way.”
“The Wrexham game was a game that we were expected to win as we were in good form and they’d struggled that season. We had loads of chances but just couldn’t put the chances away and their keeper played well and they had nothing to lose.”
“I ended up playing with one of their strikers (Karl Connelly) at QPR and he said that it was just one of those games where they played with no pressure on them and they got a wee bit of luck.”
“It meant we had a real difficult bus journey home – it was a tense atmosphere for a little while but these players had an unbelievable mentality, resilience and character and to come back from that disappointment sums up what they were like as players and are as people.”
It was resilience that was certainly needed in the Semi Final first leg at Stoke, until that is… “Hessie got that amazing goal in the ninety-third minute and again he was the heartbeat of the team and had the energy and commitment and dedication to drag the team up and it showed with that goal and highlighted how important he was to the team.”
“Then in the home game, they had two players sent off – they were a big strong physical team – but the players deserved to get all the rewards for the effort they put in.”
“I’m a coach these days (Andy today is the assistant manager to the Scottish ladies national team) and to be honest when you ask a player if they’re fit, you realise that sometime they don’t tell you the full truth.”
“That was probably the case when Peter asked me if I was fit for the Final and I said yes. For me growing up in Scotland, the only games on the TV was England v Scotland home Internationals at Wembley, and it was a dream come true to go there and be involved – to see the number of supporters who turned up was incredible and it was great to be part of!”
Join us next time as we continue the “Twenty-two Days in May” with the conclusion of our chat with Andy as we return to May 28th 2000 and the day that Thommo became Gillingham’s very own “flying Scotsman!”