Gills defender Callum Davies in action at Ebbsfleet Picture: Steve Crispe

by Luke Cawdell

Callum Davies completed his first 90 minutes of the pre-season on Saturday and hopes he’ll be seeing plenty of action when the season kicks off in August.

The 19-year-old central defender (pictured) has four Gillingham appearances to his name and now wants to follow in the footsteps of his friend Connor Essam, who last season burst onto the scene.

He said: "Hopefully I can make a name for myself and get in and see what happens.

"As much as I haven’t played that much I feel like I have a bit of experience and hopefully this year is my year.

"Hopefully come August 14 I could get my name on the team sheet. If not, I will keep my head down and hopefully get into it.

"I have played with Connor for the last five or six years and we know each other inside out. Hopefully I can aspire to do what he did last year and this year we could even play together. I will just do what I can and it will be my name on the sheet.

"Hopefully I did myself justice on Saturday and we will see what happens in the season."

Davies was playing alongside French trialists Bernard Onanga Itoua on Saturday and the Gills emerged 3-2 winners.

"First half we started really brightly and since we came back from pre-season we have been bang on passing and moving and keeping the ball," said Davies.

"It all came together and it was a good team performance, especially in the first half.

"I prefer to get the ball down and play and some of the best defenders in the world do that, like Ricardo Carvalho, coming out with the ball. If that’s how he wants us to play then that suits me because I prefer that.

"I was getting a bit tired in the second half but it was pre-season and it’s just about getting minutes in the tank. I think it was a good team performance overall."

The Gills team have been worked hard this summer, under the watchful eye of sports science coach James Russell and Davies admits that his own close season work-out was nowhere near the levels they are reaching now.

He said: "I did quite a bit of work before pre-season with a runner in Gillingham but I was still not very good in comparison to the other players so it might not have looked like I did a lot of running.

"Obviously all pre-season is hard and you need to get your head down and do as much as you can do. I am not naturally a fit person but as we get further through the season hopefully I will get match fit and sharper."