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Occasional contributor, and very worried, Chloecat gives her thoughts after witnessing last night's game:
For the Gills fans, obviously the former – last night’s game had everything – 9 goals, penalties scored and missed, all that was missing was the sending off – and for us that was the catastrophe.
At the end of the game last night I felt shell shocked - sick, sad and desperately disappointed. How many Hereford fans have seen us score 4 and still lose? Well the 45 or so of us at Gillingham went through every emotion possible during the game and the frustration felt by some at the end was understandable. We were up, down, up, down and eventually out. The post mortem will not change the result. Why can’t we hold onto a lead? Why didn’t the referee send off the Gills keeper? Should Purdie have taken that final penalty when he was injured? The questions keep coming but the only comfort to be found when I got home was that we were still 22nd in the league. If, at the end of the season, we are still above that dotted line, I’ll see Tuesday night as one of heroic failure, a classic I was privileged to see. However, at the moment I’m not that optimistic.
There were some positives out of the night – we scored 4 goals (a first in the league this season), Tom Barkhuizen was magnificent (where would we be if we hadn’t had him with us this year), we held on for 41 minutes before conceding, there was no lack of effort ... but then I’m struggling.
I so desperately wanted Pitman to succeed this year but I think I underestimated the contributions people such as Lennie Lawrence and Dave Kevan made last year to our survival. Such an experienced and cool head has been lacking this year and I’m not convinced about Gary Peters. Keyte and Russon have done well off the pitch – the revamp of the Starlite rooms and community involvement particularly with local schools stand out, but the decisions made on the pitch have been naive in the extreme. The reality is a lot of the players who tried so desperately last night, will still be with us next year but sadly Barkhuizen won’t. While signing up young prospects such as Pell and Evans makes sense, I’m amazed how many others have been signed up when we have no idea where we’ll be come 5th May.
Sadly I have no answers, just endless questions. The reality is Tuesday’s game could make or break us. The confidence we gained going forward or the doubts at the back. Every team we play will know how vulnerable we are and yet there are a lot of relegation rivals who are also struggling who we face in the next few weeks. Plymouth can’t see out a game (thankfully), Barnet are on the slide(but I really don’t want them to go down), Dagenham are as likely to implode as we are and Northampton are yet to be consistent under Adie Boothroyd.
So it’s back to Edgar Street on Saturday, with one eye on the score board to see how our rivals are faring. I subscribe to a website that sends me verses from the Bible on a daily basis and today’s came from Psalm 120 – “I call on the LORD in my distress, and he answers me”. Respectfully I suggest we all start praying!
