Gillingham Women were watched by a record crowd on Sunday and new chairman Kevin Hake believes this is just the beginning.

Free tickets helped swell the attendance at Chatham’s Bauvill Stadium to 447 - close to doubling their previous best - as Gillingham were beaten 1-0 by FA Women’s National League Southern Premier title favourites Oxford United.

Mr Hake - who is also the chairman and manager of Chatham Town’s senior men’s team - was determined to keep Gillingham alive after their future was threatened. Survival has been an uphill battle for previous owner and manager Josh Oatham after Gillingham FC decided to axe them to save money during the Covid pandemic.

“We have smashed the attendance record for the team,” said the new chairman. “When I took over the men’s team, we were getting crowds of just over 100. To get 447 at our first women’s game hopefully we can now reach out further into the community as well, boost those attendances and get the community supporting the women. Who knows where it can take us.”

Gillingham’s first six games of their league season have been away as they have looked for a new home venue. There were nerves early on at Chatham as they conceded a sloppy goal on 12 minutes.

They were on the backfoot for much of the opening half but the second half was a different story, showing more confidence as they threatened an equaliser. Phoebe Leitch came closest in the last minute with a shot that went narrowly wide.

Josh Oatham, who has handed over ownership but remains in charge of team affairs as manager, said: “I think there were definitely nerves before coming out and we had to play it down to the group. The girls want to play in this environment and the first game is always about getting your feeling for it.

“First half we didn’t really show what we were about but second half it all clicked and we put a good performance on. If it wasn’t for a couple of millimetres we might have taken something.”

Gillingham are away to bottom side Crawley Wasps tonight (Tuesday).

Oatham said: “It’s bottom of the league and they are the games I don’t like, when you are expected to win!

“We have a really good group, even on Saturday we had an injury before the game started so we had to shuffle things about but that is our group, we are so resilient and we will go again, we dust ourselves down.

“We are proud of Saturday, a couple of different decisions first half and we would have been better off in the overall game, bur we take a lot from the second half and we can keep building from here.”