By Nathan Jackson
January 6 2010

Gillingham is, at the time of writing, Kent's only Football League team. The most southern-easterly club in the League has an interesting ground that has four very different stands, but it's a ground I like and a ground I would love to visit again one day.

Gillingham's Priestfield was a ground I had wanted to visit for a long time, one of the main reasons being that one of my friends live down there, but the other being that it looked like an excellent ground and I was thoroughly looking forward to my visit.

Getting down to the ground was easy enough, but parking near the ground is a nightmare and it's similar to Luton Town in that virtually every single side street has double yellow lines or is permit parking only. It took the person I was going with nearly 45 minutes to find a place to park. Also, with the ground being amongst rows and rows of terraced houses, finding much to do around the ground was fairly difficult.

On the second visit, I had gone on the supporter's coach and they parked near about ten minute's walk away. It was because of this I got a good look at what was around the general area......not a lot to be precise. It was like the beginnings of the outskirts of a town centre, full of small newsagents and charity shops. Other than that there appeared to be nothing to do nearby.

The turnstile area for the away end is at the end of a terraced street and directly between two alley ways, so if it was a case where it was a local derby then there would a very high chance that there could have been some issues......thankfully it would take something extreme for Gillingham vs Lincoln to be a derby.

Upon entering the ground, I was immediately impressed with the overall look of the ground and other than the temporary stand that the away fans are housed in, this ground wouldn't look out of place in the Championship. The temporary stand, alternatively known as the Brian Moore Stand, is behind one of the goals and with an unrestricted view of the action, you can easily see what's happening down the other end of the pitch.

To the away fans' left is the Medway Stand, an unusual two tiered effort that has a reasonably sized lower tier, but an upper tier that only has six or seven rows of seating, something I'd not seen anywhere else in the country. The Rainham End is behind the other goal, a large single tiered effort where most of the atmosphere comes from, although we'll get more onto this later. The Gordon Road Stand finishes off the ground and is easily the least impressive of the three permanent stands.

Atmosphere wise, I thought Gillingham was just above average, mainly singing when winning, but when they went behind in our second trip it was virtually silent within the ground. The variety of chants when they were actually making a noise was also somewhat limited, meaning that it was a bit bland in terms of the atmosphere.

The programme is reasonable in terms of content, although it did have slightly more adverts in it than you're likely to get elsewhere.

In terms of friendliness, the Gillingham fans were reasonable, although the ones I met were a bit on the dunce side of the intelligence scale. I ran into one who said "Is that a Lincoln shirt?"......whilst pointing at the emblem on the football shirt......."oh dear," I thought to myself.

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Gillingham's Priestfield

Discussion started by theimps.ka (IP Logged), 03/07/2010 19:44

theimps.ka
03/07/2010 19:44

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