HE MAY only have just taken the job, but, on Saturday’s showing, it seems that Stan Ternent is already having a positive effect on the lads.

Despite most of the national media saying otherwise, I thought that we were excellent from the first whistle against Rotherham and we thoroughly deserved our win.

They looked like the same group of players that have playing for us all season, but they played absolutely nothing like them.

The only surprise on the afternoon was that we hadn’t managed to score before the 70th minute of a game we totally dominated.

Rotherham were absolutely awful and never looked like winning the game, but the longer it went on without us making the breakthrough, the more worried we were becoming that the unthinkable could happen.

However, all our worries were dispelled with 20 minutes left when Chris Hope’s looping header dropped over Mike Pollitt to ease the nerves around the Priestfield.

After 80 minutes Matty Jarvis doubled the advantage and everything was looking rosy.

But, of course, we don’t like to make things easy for ourselves, so decided to try and let Rotherham back into the match. The Millers actually had three chances to reduce the deficit, but fortunately could only take one of them.

And the icing was put on the cake with the last kick of the game when Paolo Vernazza opened his Gills account with a brilliant lob over Pollitt from 25 yards. It’s just a shame for the Watford man that he plays from Rotherham…

All in all, it was a great day. Stan’s off the mark with three points in his first home game, we’re now nine points in front of Rotherham and just one point away from moving out of the bottom three.

But more importantly than all that was the level of the performance. Mama Sidibe and Alan Pouton were particularly impressive, and it’s not been often that I’ve been able to go home from a match and say that!

The win gives us a renewed hope for the months ahead. We’ve got 22 points from 24 games now and while we have to improve that in the remaining 22 matches, I certainly don’t think it’s out of the question that we could stay up comfortably.