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The festive period is often a time for reflection on the 12 months that have passed.
It’s no different for football fans as we look back on the opening months of the season ahead of a busy Christmas and New Year run of games.
For us Gillingham supporters, it’s been a campaign of some frustration so far but with the shoots of a recovery (of sorts) going some way to appeasing the grievances of a mutinous sect that had been growing in both voice and number.
The snowballing (see what we did!?) of that rebellion gathered pace during a winless run that looked unlikely to end this side of Christmas at one point.
A particular lowlight was Gills’ Priestfield humbling against Scunthorpe, who, aside from a hefty Doug Loft challenge which correctly saw him dismissed, were granted the freedom of the pitch to inflict a 3-0 defeat in what was the worst Gillingham performance in some time.
Just as well neither of us had written for a newspaper in Scunthorpe earlier that week professing that our side was improving game by game.
It triggered that winless run which saw the side go two months without registering victory,
JPT shoot-out victory aside.
The glory of football, of course, is that it can all change in the blink of an eye.
Up to Saturday’s disappointing defeat against Chesterfield, the team’s six-match unbeaten streak, yielding four wins, was cause for a welcome and collectively large sigh of relief.
The highlight of that run was undoubtedly the 3-2 league win over Leyton Orient – from complete heartbreak to utter ecstasy in a matter of moments. Had we not been surrounded by a crowd of likeminded fans at the time, our celebrations could have been misconstrued as a romantic clinch!
For all the misery and long journeys we endure, moments like that make it all worthwhile.
Highlights like that have been few and far between this season.
Home triumphs over Crewe and Yeovil early on were about as routine as Gillingham wins get, raising hopes for at least a mid-table finish, particularly following the impressive victory over Peterborough – probably the best performance of the season, at home anyway.
That’s because the side has finally won an away game! With our past firmly in mind, the first away win of any Gillingham season is always a nice box to tick and the sooner the better.
The golden rule of Gillingham fandom, of course, is that once we win away, we tend to lose at home, something that played out over the weekend.
Now, we – the fans and those inside the club – must pick ourselves up again following what became a quite poisonous atmosphere towards the end of Saturday’s match which saw a meek follow-up to clawing back a two-goal deficit.
So what of the remainder of the season? Still in the JPT, that competition is a bonus. The league, for us at least, remains the priority.
With some of the main men out of favour to varying degrees, it looks like League 1 survival is going to fall primarily on the heads of Norris, Dickenson and a former Manchester United and Hibernian forward.
Read the full column in this week's Medway Messenger newspaper, with Chris Ray's tales of a trip to Coventry and Liam Billington's take on the club's Johnstone's Paint Trophy run.
