Pre-season and the phoney war

By this time cricket, especially in a year when the touring opposition are not the most attractive, has began to lose some of its interest and next term's football fixtures have been published, whetting the appetite even more.

Six more weeks to endure, Wimbledon provides a distraction, the Open Golf is worth a glance and perhaps the South Africans might reignite the cricket season, but there are the Pre-Season Friendlies to fill the void.

The good old PSF, do I love them, do I loathe them? Well, I certainly love the thought of them.They are a way to get back into the swing of the Saturday routine, for those of us who still frequent a terrace, a way of getting used to standing on your feet for 90 minutes, pre-season training, if you like. But when the football comes along, more often than not, there is very little to encourage you away from the TV view of Sharapova's charms.

There is no such thing as a competitive friendly, England internationals over the years have proved this point time and again. Managers necessarily ring the changes, with different line ups starting each half. They are half-paced, nobody tackles and goals are celebrated with polite applause.

Sometimes the opposition arriving are big names, Chelsea, West Ham and Arsenal XI's, but those roman numerals generally tell the tale. One of this Pre-Season's visitors, Ipswich are advertised as an XI, perhaps a sign of Gillingham's fall from grace to the bottom tier. As a youngster I can remember some of these XIs turning up at Tonbridge's Angel Ground, much anticipation was almost invariably greeted with "who" as the opposition team sheet was read out.

At Priestfield we have suffered the same fate at times, but have also had some of the star turns making an appearance. Who can forget Ruud Gullit's introduction to English football when he made his Chelsea debut in a 1995 PSF and in the first couple of minutes without having touched the ball being dumped on his backside, prompting an almost too gleeful response from myself: "Welcome to England, Ruud".

Certainly one of the most famous XIs to grace Priestfield was in August 1993, when a Steve Lovell goal was enough for a famous victory over Manchester United, a team brought to Gillingham by Steve Bruce to honour Buster Collins, but completely unrecognisable.

West Ham have been fairly regular pre-season visitors over the years, most recently a couple of years ago when a 40-year-old Teddy Sheringham got a warm reception (and a very quick goal) from the Priesfield faithful in a testimonial for the legend that is Andy Hessenthaler, .

Pre-season has in the past produced a few tours for the club. The sponsorship link-up with Sea France took us to Le Touquet in 2003 for matches against Lens and Lille. Gillingham were comfortably beaten in both games but, especially for the first game, it was amazing to see upwards of 500 Gills fans occupying the bars of the French town. There had been a previous jaunt to France back in 1989 with a four game tour and during Damien Richardson's tenure there was a four game trip to Ireland. It would be nice to see the return of these trips.

These days the pre-season fixture list is rather predictable. Dover, with the Hess factor, and Mark Stimson's old boys, Grays and Stevenage, feature in a less than appealing list. Just looking back at some of the fixtures in years gone by and there are some fascinating names to conjure with. Who can forget the visits of the Australian Olympic Team, Japan, Sporting Kuwait, Bahrain and Al Alhi (whichever country they came from!), truth is we have forgotten all of them, because that is the nature of the Pre-Season Friendly.

Never mind, we can look and make our assessments for the coming season on the strength of this phoney war, but don't make too hasty a judgement, remember Steve Lomas' performance against Colchester last August? It all went downhill from there.