After finishing 7th in 1977-78 the pre-season optimism was at an all time high for 1978-79.
It proved to be an incredible, but ultimately frustrating, season. We eventually finished 4th but one more point would have seen us promoted and two would have seen us go up as champions! It was the closest we had ever been to Division Two.
The top of the final table looked like this:
Football League Division 3
1. Shrewsbury Town - 61pts
2. Watford - 60
3. Swansea City - 60
4. Gillingham - 59
5. Swindon Town - 57
It was a season where we only lost one home game to Watford 3-2 (Overton, Westwood). We had made Priestfield a fortress again.
Although it took us until the 7th game of the season to register our first win (1-0 at home to Chester City (Price)), the signs were good and we gradually improved as the season went on.
I paid my first ever trip to Oxford United on Saturday 28th October 1978 where Ken Price scored in a 1-1 draw. This was the start of an incredible sequence of results against Oxford at the Manor Ground. From this season until season 1982-83 all our matches there ended as 1-1 draws. The sequence came to an end in 1983-84, the season that Oxford walked away with the championship, but we won there 1-0!
I was now travelling on my own to away games as Dave had gone to the University of Hull to study for a degree.
Having travelled to Peterborough United (1-1 , Nicholl) and Oxford United in consecutive weeks I decided to take my 12 year old brother to his first ever Gills’ away game at Watford on Saturday 11th November 1978 (a day before my 21st birthday).
Gills put up a strong display but were eventually beaten 1-0 by the eventual runners up. On the way back we stopped at Oxford Circus to change tube trains and were amazed by the number of people at the station. We decided to look above ground to see what was going on. It turned out that London had just switched on their Christmas Lights and the crowds were there to watch them. This was the year that they experimented with lasers for Christmas lights. It didn’t really work as all you could see was a red beam of light above the road. It was never used again. After about 5 minutes we decided that there was nothing worth seeing and went back into the tube station where I discovered that I had lost my programme. (I was an avid collector back then, so I was most annoyed!)
Following this defeat at Watford, however, we embarked on an impressive 11 match unbeaten run. This run included an incredible home game with Tranmere Rovers when we came back from a two goal deficit at half time to win 3-2 (Price, Westwood (pen) & Nicholl). I remember thinking this was what teams striving promotion have to do, keep fighting and never admit defeat…..the New Year of 1979 was looking good.
For the entire season I don’t think we were ever in the top two, hovering around third position for most of the time but we still believed we had the team to get us up.
Then on Saturday 31st March 1979 Swindon Town visited the Priestfield Stadium. A good crowd of 9,460 saw us take a two goal lead through Dean White and Danny Westwood. Then it happened, Danny Westwood was clobbered, from behind for the umpteenth time by Swindon defender Ray McHale. We were awarded the free-kick and the story goes that Danny Westwood turned too the referee and said something along the lines of “Get this f***king idiot of my back!” to which the Swindon defender is allegedly said to have replied “You’ll have to send him off for swearing, ref!” which is exactly what the referee did. We were down to ten men and had lost one of our best strikers in the first half. One elderly supporter in the Town End was so incensed by this decision that he ran on to the pitch and aimed a punch at the ref. This incident resulted in fences being put up at both ends of the ground some eight months later. Unfortunately Swindon made their man advantage tell and pulled back the two goal deficit before half time. We held firm in the second half and the game petered out into a 2-2 draw. This is where, as far as I’m concerned, that the hatred of Swindon Town and in particular Ray McHale started amongst Gills’ fans. I’m convinced that had Westwood not been incorrectly sent off we would have got two points from this game and not one.
A top of the table clash against eventual champions Shrewsbury took place at Priestfield on Saturday 28th April 1979. The previous Wednesday we had won 4-2 (Funnell 2, Westwood, Price) and this helped swell the crowd to a massive 14,902.
We left it late but two goals in the last five minutes gave us a fabulous 2-0 win over the best side in the division. There was no doubt about it now…the Gills were going up!
Having seen off the Shrews we now feared nobody and looked forward to the next game on 5th May away at Swindon Town. A chance for us to gain our revenge!
My brother and I travelled by train to London, across London by tube, and then from Paddington to Swindon on British Rail’s relatively new Inter City 125 service. (I never realised until then how good train travel could be!)
There were 15,117 inside the County Ground and the majority went home happy as the Wiltshire side beat us 3-1 (Funnell) in a bad tempered match. Feelings were obviously still running high following the Westwood incident at Priestfield and this time it was Terry Nicholl who saw red.
We travelled home disappointed to be greeted by the news that all hell at let loose in the tunnel at the end of the match. Ken Price and Dean White both being accused of throwing punches at the Swindon players and their trainer in particular. This led to both players having to visit the police station to explain their actions. If I remember rightly both were charged with GBH but the charges were subsequently dropped. It only served to increase the hatred that Gills’ fans already had for Swindon Town.
That night in my local pub, the George in City Way, Rochester, someone had chalked on the darts scoreboard “Ken Price eats bricks!” By the end of the evening it read “Ken Price eats trainers!”
We now needed to win our remaining three fixtures to guarantee promotion. If we didn’t we would be relying on someone else to slip up.
The players needed to put the Swindon incidents out of their heads as the next game was away at Colchester United on the following Monday. Despite taking a 2-0 lead through Gary Armstrong and Danny Westwood the Essex side came back and the game finished 2-2. The dream was all but over. Despite beating Exeter City 2-0 (Price, Funnell) at home and winning our last game of the campaign 2-0 at Chesterfield it wasn’t enough and we had missed out by the cruellest of margins.
A lot of people thought the 2-2 draw at Colchester is where we lost promotion but many thousands more (including myself) would sight those two games with Swindon Town as the reason. It was Swindon Town who cost us promotion. Little did we know that these words would come back to haunt us in a few years time!
Despite our good form in the league it was not transferred to the cups where fourth division Reading knocked us out of both the FA Cup and the League Cup in the first rounds!
The season ended leaving me feeling frustrated, we had come so close, could we do it again? I did not think so and neither did a lot of my friends and, judging by the following season, neither did the players!
(Next time: Not a Lot to Shout About!)