Incorporating a women’s team into the set-up at Gillingham is on the agenda.

The Gills lost their own senior women’s team after cost-cutting during the Covid-19 pandemic and they’ve since been taken under the umbrella of Chatham Town Football Club.

Gillingham Women - who changed their name from Gillingham Ladies following the team's departure from Priestfield - play in the third tier of the English pyramid. They made it through to the Kent Women's Cup final on Sunday under a new manager.

Gills’ new owners Brad and Shannon Galinson have been keeping tabs on the club’s old team and are keen to have one of their own at the club once again.

Mr Galinson said: “They (Gillingham Women) are at Chatham now, doing well, the idea is to figure out what they need, if they need anything and how we can support them or other ways of doing it, because there are others women’s teams around the country that need stadiums and support, so whatever works the best for that side of the club, we want to make sure we are there for them.”

Shannon Galinson has already started to set up meetings with a women’s team in mind and Mr Galinson said: “There are lots of ways of doing it, to support them and make sure that they are viable and sustainable and able to continue to grow.

“We have made initial overtures to figure out how we do that, there are a bunch of different ways that could work, I would say, regardless of how we do it, we absolutely support and will support women’s sports.

“It’s an obvious statement but 50% of the community are women, so that resources and focus and importance should be given to women’s sports, we definitely want to figure out how we do that, absolutely.”

Gillingham's decision to lose their women's team in 2020 came during the height of the Covid pandemic, when the club were struggling without much of their regular income.

Paul Scally, chairman at the time, said: "My main concern is to keep the football club afloat, my primary concern, to make sure there is a club in six to nine months’ time and if that means taking some decisions that some people don’t like then I am sorry.

"It is a fact that ladies football is costing us money, it is an overhead, not cash positive, it takes a lot of resource to run and right now we have to lean up the ship and focus on our core business which is professional men’s football, simple as that."