The Zimmer Boys on Tour
Swansea v Gillingham – Swanning along
Published by Simon Head on September 9, 2008
The Dolphin Hotel in the centre of the city isn’t a bad place to set up camp for a few nights in Sheep-Shagging Land, pivoted of course around a Friday night rip-up at Swansea’s Liberty Stadium. Would Gills make it eight away defeats on the bounce from the start of the season, and close in on that 1929/30 record of a perfect ten? We hadn’t long to wait.
And talking of a perfect ten, for this trip us Zimmer Boys were in for a real treat. Our big mate, Gills fan and Page 3 Stunner Keeley Hazell was joining us for this one. You may recall that when the game was switched to Friday night there were plenty of moans from the travelling regulars like The Binman and his mates. But not from us. You see, we knew that Keeley was in South Wales on the Saturday with her Sony modelling contract but she wouldn’t be able to make the match – “doing a spread and shooting all over Gower” as she put it (we assume she meant the Peninsula not the cricketer) – but with a Friday night kick-off she’d now be able to join us. So, for sure, we were all up for it, even if the team might not be.
At six p.m. Welsh time we had a big rendezvous in the foyer of the Dolphin with Keeley and her modelling entourage for some drinks and nibbles, and then it was piling into a fleet of taxis to make the short trip to the Liberty-X Stadium. Although the locals were turning out in some force, sadly the northern end of the ground, where the Gills fans were, was pretty sparsely populated with just over 100 souls. The regulars were there – us Zimmer Boys, The Binman and his mates, the coach mob, Gills Gate 13 Youth Firm fresh from seeing off the Gasheads’ top men last Saturday, and a few other faces – but that was about it. And what we didn’t need was some taunting from Cyril The Swan.
Now followers of club mascot politics will know that Cyril has a bad reputation. He rarely ventures to the east of the River Taff, preferring to stay in his Gower stronghold posturing and challenging anyone who comes his way. He’s been hauled up before the Welsh FA several times, most recently when he pulled Zampa The Millwall Lion’s head off and drop-kicked it into the crowd. Yes, Cyril is one bad bird, and tonight he’d decided to challenge any Gills fan that dared to race him down the length of the pitch. But little did Cyril know that we’d brought a bird of our own – and Keeley was definitely up for it. “I’ve handled plenty of things longer than him” she said (obviously referring to Cyril’s neck, which he clearly intended to use to his advantage in a photo finish) and onto the field she leapt to accept Cyril’s challenge.
Now we were going to see some action! Keeley introduced herself to the “judge”, who was in fact Cyril The Swan’s Cheerleader, and then she slowly peeled off her fur coat. Blimey – talk about a showstopper. Underneath it she was wearing her Gills kit, beautifully fitted and tailored, and she certainly filled it out in all the right places. Absolutely stunning! And with all the crowd now breathing very heavily, the two contestants were under starter’s orders.
We’d warned Keeley that Cyril was notorious for pulling something out during these challenges, so we’d expected some shenanigans at the start. But we’d clearly underestimated our Page 3 Stunner. As the judge yelled “Go!” without warning Keeley swung round and buried one of her six-inch killer heels low and deep into Cyril’s plumage. Now, I’m afraid I must confess that I slept through school ornithology lessons, so I’ve no idea whether swans actually do have a meat and two veg or whether when kicked in such an area they let out un-swanlike noises in a Welsh accent. I don’t know – but for sure Cyril was a swan well and truly plucked as Keeley stormed through to win the race by a country mile (or a Welsh one, which is even longer).
On my wall at home I’ve a collection of Gills photos – a Pat Terry towering header, Brian Yeo clinching promotion at Colchester, Ken Price smashing home against Shrewsbury, and of course Thommo wheeling away arms aloft after getting the winner at Wembley. A photo of Keeley’s triumph is now right up there with them. For the two Wigan blokes lying beaten on the floor you have Cyril The Swan crawling about in agony, beak all crumpled from bashing it in the turf after Keeley’s killer heel had struck home. And then you have Keeley herself, arms outstretched, breasting the tape in triumph. Never in the field of human endeavour has “krBS.COm” been shown off to such eye-bulging effect. It was all too much for Len Catheter, watching on next to me. With a glazed look on his face he breathed “Aren’t they magnificent old boy?” and then he disappeared into the toilet for about half an hour and missed the start of the match. Whatever was he doing in there? He can’t have been doing a Scally-At-Swindon and feeling “physically sick” surely?
Len missed a somewhat impressive entry from new manager Mark Stimson. He led his troops on for what I expect many of them thought would probably be the usual bit of stretching, pulling and then a bit of a kick-about. Far from it. This was an impressive twenty-minute planned workout. Stretching and pulling first as Manager Mark prowled about like a caged lion watching closely everything they were doing and “advising” one or two of them, then some fast moving passing routines again under the hawkeye gaffer’s constant gaze, and finally some individual stuff, concentrating particularly on the strikers collecting, turning and shooting at the keeper. Chris Dickson was particularly impressive with his shooting, and got plenty of what looked like favourable coaching from the gaffer too, so it was a bit of a surprise when he was dropped to the bench in favour of Gary The Goal Machine. Mind you, The Goal Machine seemed to have been told to cut out the horse’s-lungs-work-yer-socks-off stuff from Jepson’s time, and played in the proper forward position throughout, even when we were under the cosh in the second half.
So away we went. Swansea set their stall out right from the off with loads of passing, but they tended to over-elaborate making about three passes too many. Pretty to watch, but it wouldn’t hurt you too much if you stood back and let them get on with it. Which for most of the game is exactly what Gills did. For the first five minutes we hardly had the ball, and when Swansea eventually got their first shot in Simon Royce spilled it and then scrambled to block the follow-up. On many other away games that would have finished up in the back of the net, but maybe this was a sign that things were at last turning our way. And four minutes later – boy did they turn our way. Delroy Facey latched onto a loose ball in the inside-right channel, pushed a few yards forward and from well outside the box rifled in a screamer, which beat De Vries, all ends up as it arrowed across him and into his top right-hand corner. Pick that one out!
It stunned everyone – and not least the fact that we’d doubled our seven-game goals tally in not much more than seven minutes. The Swans were shell-shocked and we would have had another soon after if Gary The Goal Machine had been quicker onto a dreadful backpass, allowing de Vries to advance and block. Up at our end, we had a grandstand view of how Gills would defend the most unusual position of being a goal up, and in truth they were in little trouble for the rest of the half. There was no reckless tackling, no kamikaze passing, and on the odd occasions when Swansea did get close Simon Royce dealt with it competently. The whole thing was most un-Gillingham-like.
The second part of the first half was dominated by the incident in the twenty-third minute when Simon King brought the ball out down the left hand side, and was hacked down by Feeney. The referee had a good view of it, and immediately waved the juicy red one. Much to the disgust of the home fans down that side, who gave Kingy some vicious booing right the way through to halftime. How unsporting of him not to have allowed his ankle to be broken. About fifteen minutes from full-time someone in that area chucked a foot-long dart at Aaron Brown while he took a corner. It stuck in the turf about six feet from the corner flag, and a couple of feet outside the sideline, and remained there for the rest of the game. No wonder seven hundred years ago King Edward The First built castles all around the place to keep these charmers in.
For the second half Swansea decided that they had to go for it. First they brought on a forward for a midfielder, and later a forward for a defender. At times it put Gills under heavy pressure, and there was an alarming spell ten minutes in when we somehow clung on. Southall conceded a corner under heavy pressure. That found its way into the net off of Cox, but the referee ruled Royce had been fouled and disallowed it. Back came Swansea from our free kick and there was a huge shout for a penalty. That got cleared, and then a shot was lashed in that Royce turned over the bar. Several corners followed. Then Royce smothered a shot from a bloke who was through. A header got blocked, another shot was deflected over the top, and Simon Royce beat another one out. Phew!
But we survived and with twenty minutes left it began to look more and more like we’d soaked up everything that was going to be thrown at us. And just when you thought the away win was at last going to happen – with ten minutes to go Swansea attacked down the right, a cross came over, Gills’ right defensive flank went awol and Anderson scored from close range at the post. Royce had no chance. 1-1. And then, as if by magic, all the old bad habits started to appear – a couple of dreadful back-passes, hoofing under pressure, not finding our men, midfield going missing, isolated attacks going nowhere, that sort of thing. Would we survive the four minutes added-on time?
It looked as though we might. We couldn’t get the ball, but Swansea spent the whole time passing it amongst themselves. It was as though they were trying to hang on for the draw. Then suddenly they were in our box, Ian Cox hauls someone down, there was a huge roar for a penalty, and the referee, who had been favourable to us all evening, duly obliged. And so the worst of all Gills nightmare habits, conceding the last minute winner, was about to appear again. Or was it? Robinson’s kick was straight at Simon Royce, who pushes it away. Roycie and Robinson race for the loose ball, Robinson gets there fractionally ahead, but Roycie is down to smother it. Double-Saved! And as our Man Of The Match clears from hand, the final whistle goes. Blimey! We’d got a point!
So, quite a bit for Manager Mark to work on, but then again some things were pleasing none the less. As dear old Basil Hayward would have said “I saw some good things out there today”. And what’s more there was still Keeley’s triumph over Cyril The Swan to celebrate. We all had rooms at the Dolphin, so it was back there to party, party, party. Now some of you might have read about these parties in a selection of the lower tabloids. Allegations about people running down the street at five o’clock in the morning in their pants and suchlike. But us Zimmer Boys are far too much gentlemen to spill the beans on a good mate, so no tell-tales from us. Then again, you might conclude that because it’s taken nearly two days to write about the match, we might have been totally shagged out in-between times. Of course, you might think all that – but we couldn’t possibly comment!
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The Stimson revolution started to gather pace with a Tuesday night visit from Doncaster. Gills have got a better record against Donny than probably anyone else, regularly thumping them at Priestfield, but this time the visitors turned out to be the best passing outfit we’d seen all season. A 1-1 draw was probably better than we’d have got in Jepson’s time, when a 3-0 defeat was likely to have been the order of the day. But at Barnet in the FA Cup the roof fell in. The usual away-day story of taking the lead before half-time, and losing 2-1 to a couple of regulation headers.
Stimson went potty. He axed most of the regulars, and packed the squad with non-league players – seven loan signings in all. He played most of them at Yeovil and home to Hartlepools, getting a last minute 2-1 defeat in Somerset and a fighting 2-1 home win over The ‘Pools. And when asked what he’d found different between League Football and Non-League Football Manager Mark was pretty blunt. “Fitness. My players at Stevenage were at a far higher level than what I’ve found here, were far better prepared, and looked after themselves to a better standard, and something is going to be done about that.” Ouch! It didn’t look too promising for our old-warhorse Iffy Onuora, who had now reverted back to First Team Coach. Unsurprisingly when Fitness Guru Danny Ellis (a former light-welterweight boxer) was bought in to give ‘em some punch, Iffy departed the scene.
And wonder of wonders! Gills won away! 3-2 at Crewe of all places, the first win there for 36 years. But in true Gills’ fashion they then lost at home 2-1 to bottom club Port Vale and then lost at Bournemouth 1-0 to the then bottom club. Just typical! So on Friday December 21st the Zimmer Boys made the short trip to Sussex to see which way the Gills’ fortunes were going to swing.
Simon Head
The Zimmer Boys on Tour
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