Dagenham and Redbridge (1) 2 Strevens 1 Benson 50
Gillingham (0) 0
Att. 2,844
Entrance: £16
Programme: £2.50
Mileage: 88/3,840
Match Report
Over 1,100 Gillingham fans gave up the comfort of their armchairs in their centrally heated sitting rooms to brave a six mile crawl to the Dartford Tunnel, freezing temperatures and poor viewing conditions only to be rewarded with a display as inept as those suffered in the larger defeats at Shrewsbury and Exeter.Take your choice of adjective, woeful, wretched, appalling or just plain lousy, because they all perfectly describe Gillingham’s performance at Victoria Road this afternoon.
Things could not have started worse, a goal conceded in just 20 seconds and it failed to improve from that low point. I’m going to struggle to describe the goal such was the poor vantage point that I had, but firstly how do you manage to concede so quickly given that you have the ball from the kick off? Having lost it, the ball was pumped forward, Garry Richards and Alan Julian dithered and Ben Strevens got in between them to roll the ball in, off a post. Strevens and his partner Paul Benson have scored plenty this season, but this was pure charity.
Gillingham went on to have an equal share of possession in the first half. This is not a compliment, Dagenham were awful and for Gillingham to fashion just one shot on goal, a weak effort from Albert Jarrett is a testament to the pathetic 45 minutes put in by the visitors. They did have the ball in the net from a Adam Miller header, but the flag had long since been shown by the linesman. It had been a half when as a spectator you were aware that it was getting colder and colder because there was nothing happening on the pitch to divert your attention.
Surely the second half could not be any worse. Wrong. Five minutes into the half and Benson added a second. He picked the ball up deep into Gillingham’s half on he right hand side, unchallenged he shot across the face of Julian’s goal into the bottom right corner. Once again the angle of my view wasn’t great, but it certainly looked that the keeper could have done a whole lot better. Julian’s inclusion had been a surprise, Simon Royce was on the bench, so it didn’t appear to be an enforced selection.
After 52 minutes another of Stimson contentious selections was finally substituted. Albert Jarrett produced another performance of stunning nothingness. Misplaced passes, the odd run into the inevitable cul-de-sac and the lack of understanding of the winger’s role in supporting his full back, turns his selection into a team playing with ten men from the first whistle.
Dagenham now had the game in their control, sadly for the home support they were far from good enough to inflict on their visitors a far bigger humiliation. Benson wasted a better chance than the one from which he scored and Nicky Southall forced Tony Roberts into his only meaningful save of the game, comfortably catching an on target free kick.
A train of thought is that Gillingham’s minds are elsewhere with the upcoming FA Cup tie, could it be that no bookings show a lack of application that could be said to have been apparent. League leaders Wycombe are the last opponents of this Christmas period and if the one point gained against Brentford is to be our sum total, then the Villa game might be seen as a costly distraction.
The mouthful that is the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham Stadium is typical of football grounds of clubs recently promoted from non-league. I last visited this stadium forty years ago on an equally cold, in fact snowbound, first round FA Cup day. Since then they have added a functional grandstand in that prefabricated style seen all too often. We were housed in the terracing behind the goal that had not enough height to make viewing pleasurable. Opposite the new stand is a length of covered terracing that has survived from that 1968 visit.
Back home the left over turkey was accompanied with a dollop of piccallili, how ironic that our turkeys also left a sour taste.
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