The Zimmer Boys on Tour
Into the jaws of hell – Summer 2008
Published by Eccles on August 14, 2009
The Zimmer Boys are back! This is an occasional chronicle of the bizarre adventures of a group of Gills fans.
They’re clapped out, cynical, irreverent, and it’s best not to get down-wind of ‘em. They long for a return to the good old days – when going to an away game meant a good laugh, a good punch-up, plenty of booze, a bit of rumpy-pumpy if your luck was in – oh, and a win for the Gills.
The new series covers their exploits last season, as The Zimmer Boys on Tour recounts their adventures in Season 2008-2009.
Into The Jaws Of Hell: Summer 2008
The punch-up in the back of the van on the way home from Leeds had probably relieved the tension from what had been a dreadful four months since that encouraging 3-1 win at Huddersfield. When we reached the caff at the Newport Pagnell services everyone had sat glowering at each other, but then grunting had started when someone asked for the sugar and we were all more or less mates again by the time we got back to Kent.
Lets face it, we were stuck with relegation and we’d just have to make the best of it. Stimson wasn’t going to fall on his sword, and Scally wasn’t going to sack him ‘cos we were broke and we couldn’t afford to pay him off. We’d just have to hope he could kick this bone-idle shower into line, ditch the duds, get the rest of ‘em fit and organised and start winning some games, especially away from home. He certainly rattled the hen-coop when he announced that they were all coming back for pre-season training on 1st June. Blimey – that would sort the “yes boss” types from the bolshie “get stuffed” types who wanted to go on their holidays. It’ll be the Costa Del Folkestone permanently for the latter, that’s for sure.
Dunno about the rest of the Boys but by Tuesday 6th May I was slowly beginning to mellow a bit about the Fourth Division, or Coca Cola League Two to give it its latest trendy name. Sure there were places to visit that made you shudder like Macclesfield and Morecambe, but then there were places like Chester, Lincoln, Shrewsbury and Exeter that appealed to culture vultures and lovers of fine architecture like our goodselves. And then there was dear old Accrington Stanley (who are they?). We’d no longer be some of the dwindling band that could say we’d seen the Gills play them. Now we’d be joined by the likes of those young bucks from the Gate 13 Gills Youth Firm, who might even have a meet there.
And then there was that good old summer standby – cricket, glorious cricket. Only it rained a lot, and we sat in the pavilion at the St Lawrence Ground day after day watching the rain bounce off the wicket covers. The only thing that cheered us up was thinking of Stimmo’s personal fitness guru Danny Ellis putting the footballers through yet another gruelling commando-quivering June routine as it pelted down. Then, just after lunch one day, and as we were sinking yet another pint of Shepherd Neame’s finest Spitfire Ale, the pavilion steward barked at us “You Zimmer Boys – sitting around here all day boozing and making the place look untidy. Why don’t you go and help the mummers rehearse their Shakespeare?”
Eh? It turned out that as part of the Canterbury Festival, this group of medieval actors were putting on a tableau of Shakespeare’s plays in the Archbishop’s garden, and they were doing their rehearsals in the cricket school. It sounded quite fun, so we wandered over to offer them the benefits of our considerable thespian abilities. We were immediately confronted by a bloke who had a Stimmo hairdo, tight blue jeans and a purple mohair sweater, and turned out to be the director. “Mmm, Zimmer Boys you say? Different. Grab some scripts, put on some of our mummers’ jester gear – it’ll fit over your colostomy bag sweetie – and then let’s get down to it.”
Old Blow a sweetie? Hmm, not sure about this. They were doing some dark stuff, with stabbings and bodies everywhere. Troilus and Cressida, Macbeth, Henry the Sixth Part Three, Julius Caesar. And our problem was that when we got into it, the football kept breaking into our lines. Like when Macbeth is contemplating giving King Duncan a good stabbing “Is this the Fourth Division which I see before me?” And in Henry the Sixth when the poor old king gets it in the Tower “Down, down to hell and say Stimmo sent thee thither” And in Julius Caesar, when they all get stuck in “speak hands for me” “Et tu, Brute?” and all that, Len Catheter intoned “and at the foot of Ken Bates’ statue, Great Scally fell”. Then someone stabbed him up the arras – no hang on that was Hamlet.
The Director bloke got quite shirty. “Look, Zimmer Boys, luvs – you just simply MUST keep to the Bard’s scripts. We just CANNOT have your terrace riff-raff behaviour intruding into our performance.” He even stamped his foot. “Terrace riff-raff?” Forget it, sunshine. We walked. And so last summer the Archbishop of Canterbury was robbed of a stunning Zimmer Boys’ Shakespearian performance in his rose garden.
Mind you, the performances from the new look super-fit Stimmo army as they romped around the Garden of England weren’t much to write home about. A 1-0 home defeat by Stevenage, a 2-0 one by Birmingham, a 1-0 defeat at Dover and a 2-1 defeat for a Gillingham XI at Folkestone sort of got explained away by thumping Faversham 8-0. And when they “crossed the water” which in our cash strapped times means the Thames, we got wins at Aveley (where?) Thurrock and the 1-0 defeat at Grays, which was more of a belting than the score suggested.
Fans persevered because they wanted to say that they had actually seen our new signing Big Mac. Mark McCammon was Stimmo’s secret weapon from Doncaster Rovers, all 6 foot 5 of him, and he’d got a three year deal. But he’d been on the treatment table for most of the summer so no-one had actually seen him in a Gillingham shirt. But they had seen Gary The Goal Machine. Our old mate was nothing if not resilient. Stimmo had sacked him once, but he had got some clause in his contract that said that if he couldn’t get fixed up elsewhere Gillingham had got to take him back. We wish we’d have had something like that when the Yard closed.
And so we came to the first game of the season, at Bournemouth on 9th August. A very un-Boringmouth day. It rained hard, it was quite cold, and some of the fans got stuck in traffic jams around the New Forest and missed the first half. They missed Darren Anderton putting the Cherries ahead with a bit of silky skill, but they were all present and correct when we scored our first goal of the season, always a landmark. And it was Gary The Goal Machine that swept in a volley in injury time to grab us a point. Blimey, that sacking had done the trick. Maybe Stimmo should use it as standard club policy.
Onwards to two home games – and back to earth. A 1-0 defeat by Colchester in the Carling Cup was bad enough, a 1-0 home defeat by Luton, to a third minute goal, was just awful. Luton of course were pretty much relegated before the season started after being zapped a 30 point deduction for financial irregularities, they’d lost most of their players and a couple of weeks previously they had been signing practically anyone they could find. But they presented as a coherent unit that knew what they were about, as opposed to Gillingham who, after all the pre-season hype, ran around like a bunch of headless chickens. And the fans were not best pleased.
As ever, a mastery of diversionary tactics kicked in. It was all the fault of someone sitting in the stands who wouldn’t come in the dressing room after the game, and had his meals on his own. Yes, really! Who could that be? Us Zimmer Boys had our suspicions, and we nodded sagely when someone went down the A2 in an easterly direction. And then there was a strange incident that we witnessed in a hotel restaurant on the morning of the game at Accrington, which will be recounted later in this chronicle.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. With the team in early season disarray next up on Saturday 23rd August was the long trek to Darlington, last season’s losing play-off finalists.
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