Gils History

[Power to people]

Can someone enlighten me on the history between Swindon & The Gils, I remember hearing it was to do with a player about 30 or 40 years ago but have never really heard what happened, why they hold a grudge ??

[Bushey Boy]

In teh play offs in teh 80s, ray magail (sp) had a fight or something against them, they didnt go up in the play offs, they hate us from this.

We generally do not care about them, until they threw rocks and bricks into our fans at teh last game.

Saturday will be nasty as they hate us even more.I believe thats what it is but would expect you will get mex or spencer white giving more details

[Arriba]

the ray macail incident was years before the play offs but it did happen.

[Summerof69]

The incident happened in the late 70's...

http://www.gillingham-mad.co.uk/news/loadfeat.asp?cid=EDW3&id=183556

[redbullzeye]

So they got touchy about some dodgy reffing and Ray McHale??!  Just makes you want to go off and change your avatar............

[Reg Smeeton]

:groan1:

  The story goes something like this.

   Gillingham being a bit of a no mark club with no rivals....had a decent season around 78/79, when we had a decent season.  There were a couple of close games...and the Gills fans had a bit of a shooing.

  This was par for the course at the time and nothing, and I mean nothing on the scale of a Bristol game, Pompey,  or even O*frod.

 Unfortunately the Pikeys mistook it for us being interested.

  A year down the line they get 4000+ such was the ferocity of the rivalry, in much the same way as they had maybe 300 at the CG this season.

  Then in 86/87 we ended up with tehm in the PO's... the first of the modern era..The fact that they only got into the PO's because we drew at Shitty on the last day of the season, has never been acknowledged by them....must fans would say

   :cheers: fellas for putting it in even though you were in the PO's and could have just turned up and avoided injuries etc.....but no the Pikeys whinged because we won

  WE then don't play them for 20 years...but somehow not having a rival festered away in that dark corner of Kent.

  An analogy might be us at Brighton....we got knocked out,  bit of a bummer, Brighton have a few mongs....so some of our fans take an irrational distaste to Brighton.  The bulk of STFC fans being rational,  soon forgot about it.

 THe Pikeys though are strange, no doubt about it.  They'd been bigging this up for 20 years, then when we finally  play them they bring 350.

  I think something similar is going to happen with the Dongs...they need a proper rival,  and a lot of their fans would like it to be us.

  I hope they go down, so that Cheltnumb stay up for no other reason its a good day out.

  In the same way I wanted Gills in the PO's,  back in 87, because it kept the real scum out.

[Reg Smeeton]

the ray macail incident was years before the play offs but it did happen.

  Gills were managed by Gerry Scummers....ex scummer.  His mode was fairly basic lower league stuff...kick any quality off the park, if you can get close enough.  I once talked to John Shuker, who was then a pub landlord and he told me that Scummers used to tell him to kick Don Rogers when we played the scum...he laughed and said problem was he couldn't get close enough.

  Gills ended up with 10 men got stuffed on and off the pitch, and a couple of their neanderthal players attacked our assistant manager and ended up in court.   Somehow they blamed us.

  To compound this absolute lack of class, their chairman, abused Cecil Green , who many know was the epitome of the perfect gent.  Cecil had suggested to Nomark, that his boys had been a bit out of order.

[chalkies_shorts]

I think there was also the fact that after the game their coaches got put thruogh around the the Polish Club. They got off the coaches and had a pretty mean reception committee waiting for them.
The game down there the next season was interssting where the away end was full of Gills until they scored their goal and about 30 Town lads saw them off.
Basically they've gobbed it off at every opportunity without any means to back up their threats.