Gillingham (0) 2 McDonald 53,89
Aldershot Town (0) 1 Rodman 90
Att. 4,810
Entrance: Season Ticket
Programme: £3
Mileage: 45/7,057
Match Report
On FA Cup Fourth Round Day, the early round patsies of Dover Athletic met at Priestfield. Aldershot, like their hosts, arrived on a decent run of form, suggesting a good contest should ensue. Sadly, it didn’t, but having played well and lost on Tuesday, Gillingham will be pleased to have emerged with the points from a game in which they did enough to deserve the points.Cody McDonald, who had chances aplenty to score against the league leaders, Chesterfield, on Tuesday, but failed to find the net was back to his opportunist best and added his 13th and 14th goals of the season.
Danny Spiller was missing with a broken finger and Luke Rooney earned a recall to the starting eleven.
The first half was memorable only in as much that it was instantly forgettable. On a freezing cold afternoon, neither side did much to draw the attention away from the hurt that was being inflicted on the extremities.
Gillingham opened the scoring early in the second half. Curtis Weston, threaded a pass in the direction of Adebayo Akinfenwa, whose dummy allowed McDonald a snap shot which beat the Aldershot keeper, Jamie Young from 10 yards.
Aldershot fashioned their first chance on the hour mark when a Danny Hyllton shot went across the face of the goal. Jermaine McGlashin was at the far post, but failed to make any contact. As the game meandered towards the final whistle and Gillingham supporters thankful for the points from a moderate performance the game sprang to life in the last five minutes and time added on.
Alan Julian produced a spectacular parry from a close range header by Shots skipper, Anthony Charles with a couple of minutes left on the clock and following the subsequent clearance, Barry Fuller crossed into the box, a deflection off visiting defender Ben Herd fell sweetly for McDonald to strike from a similar position to his first goal as the fourth official displayed five minutes of extra time to be played.
As the last minute of that time was entered a fine shot from Alex Rodman, signed during the week from Tamworth, bent wickedly away from the despairing dive of Julian to find the bottom right corner, but there was little time for any comeback.
Following the reversal at Wycombe, Gillingham responded with a 5-1 mauling of basement side Stockport, today far more resilient opposition was encountered but they have once more returned to winning ways at the first opportunity. Winning ugly when necessary can become a good habit and today’s less than fluent performance sees a return to a play-off spot.
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