Adam Bird - My Personal Blog

The first England International I watched in the flesh was against Chile, way back on 11th February 1998 - I remember it for all the wrong reasons. Not the fact that a certain Michael Owen made his England debut or that Marcelo Salas and his Chilean compatriots showed England a footballing masterclass. But because of the pre-match warm-up; being served at 17 years old and ‘aving it large with the England ‘massive’, singing ‘no surrender’ stood upon a bar stool because everyone else was and because it seemed the cool thing to do at the time. How times change. Over the past few months Oliver has been getting into his football. He has been learning the rules and feeling the raw emotion of the beautiful game. A season ticket at the Gills has helped (strangely enough), but so has Sky and the often daily diet of Premier League or La Liga. He has also started to play too, joining a team on Saturday mornings for training and will make his league debut once his registration with the FA is ...

Last weekend Gillingham Football Club kicked off the new football season with a home game against Bradford City. It was the first time in... well, perhaps ever, I wasn’t there to see the start of a new campaign. In fact, as much as it pains me to say, it was the first time in twelve years that I began the football season as a non season ticket holder. The past few seasons have been a difficult time for us Gillingham fans. The reappointment of Andy Hessenthaler after the shambles that was our relegation season was a move aimed to rebuild the fans relationship with its players after deteriorating so badly under previous manager Mark Stimson. But ultimately, it was the wrong move as time and time again the players at the managers disposal were not playing to their full potential and two eighth place finishes meant that once again Gillingham Football Club found themselves looking for a new manager during the close season. It would be easy for me to turn around and say that on the fie...

At the beginning of every football season, the vast majority of football supporter will harbour hopes that their team will be victorious, that the end of season will be a celebration of sporting endeavour and an outpouring of pride revelling in a promotion or cup win. For most however, the reality is somewhat different and the end of season is met with apathy and frustration, whilst looking back and wondering just where the hell it went oh so wrong. Maybe it isn’t, maybe it is just the way I see things as a long suffering Gillingham supporter and that I’m a unique type of person, blinded by rose tinted glasses with extra thick lenses. After all, on reflection, come August last year I believed that we, as a club had lots to look forward to. The previous campaign had ended with the Gills in 8th place, just missing out on a play-off spot and with it a chance to return straight back to League One, “where we belong” , the gospel, according to our current manager Andy Hessenthaler an...

For a long time I’ve had this belief that Sky are evil and as a corporation have done more harm than good for English football, that they’ve taken the working class soul out of the game and made it a rich persons plaything. The only problem is, last night - I became its latest victim. I sold out. Sacrificed my team for the comfort of my lounge and added my last few pennies into the bottomless Rupert Murdoch honeypot instead of being there for the team I love. Gillingham vs Southend on a Monday night. Nothing glamorous about that, but being a Gillingham supporter has never been about glamour. The closest I’ll ever get to see Gillingham in Europe was a friendly in Calais a couple of years ago and the Premier League seems just as far away. We were close once, not so long ago in fact, finishing 11th in what is now the Championship, but it is the ghost of those glory days that make the current level of mediocrity so difficult to bare. When it was announced that Gillingham vs Southend ...

Standing in the tunnel, looking out at the stadium. It’s packed, a pre-christmas ticket bonanza that has put an extra three thousand bums on seats. The smell of grass, of fried food and the intoxicatingly pleasant sharpness of deep-heat which tickles the nostrils as the ears cope with the roar of the crowd and the stomach deals with the nerves. You’re dressed in the blue of your team, standing there at not yet five years old holding the hand of a total stranger. A man who leads out ten others to do battle against the other group of men dressed in green and black standing side by side in the long, deep space where shouts of encouragement bounce around the walls. The referee signals that it is time and off you go, into the noise which has reached a crescendo, eight thousand people on their feet to welcome their heroes, you leading the way, across the pitch and lining up in front of the main stand, with your Daddy standing by watching, tears in his eyes, feelings of pride swelling up an...

I remember my first Gillingham away game. I remember the second one too, in fact, I could probably give you a snippet or a fact from them all. Like that first one, which was way back in 87, on the open away terrace at Southend United. My younger sister Jessica was also there and I remember my fingers being stained from eating a packet of Bovril flavoured crisps. But the thing that I remember more than anything else was swallowing a whistle which I had sucked inwards rather than blowing out in order to make a reverse whistling noise and having my Dads best friend performing the Heimlich maneuver to wrestle it out when it got wedged in my windpipe. It’s why I thought that I’d better record Oliver’s first Gills away game - as it wasn’t quite so interesting. I’d had a call from Bampy on Friday afternoon, would I like to go to Crewe on Saturday? Our weekend was already planned and it involved gardening, running, rowing and taking you down the park to learn how to ride a bike with two w...

Life as a lower league football supporter is never easy. You base three months of your life in the hope and expectation that the new season is going to be better than the last, that the team which left you deflated at the end of the previous campaign undergoes a miraculous transformation and that in those three summer months those players suddenly morph into world beaters and take the league by storm. Last season as a Gillingham fan was not much fun. It started as all seasons do with expectation, the return of Andy Hessenthaler as manager and according to the club “the biggest budget of the division”, nothing less than promotion would be acceptable and we were on a mission to bounce back to League One at the first time of asking. Supporters had just witnessed the pitiful manner in how the club were relegated on the final match of the season before, away to Wycombe Wanderers, which was personally my lowest moment as a Gillingham Football Club supporter - a team bereft of passion, of...

Generally speaking Stephanie and I don’t have wonderfully exciting lives. We go to work, come home, have dinner and veg out on the sofa, watch a film together or maybe I’ll retire to the other room and spend an unhealthy amount of time on the Interwebs, writing another incessant rambling piece which passes as my blog whilst Stephanie watches a gruesome documentary about murder and it’s ensuing investigation. It has then, for the past week been something of a nice change to the usual routine with some days out, new experiences and the pleasurable involvement of somebody elses very special day. Last weekend, Friday, it all kicked off with the archibald ingall stretton... away day. The first Friday of July is declared an official work bank holiday, in that the whole agency disappear somewhere together and come back the following day feeling rather worse for wear. More specifically, a rather beautiful house in the rolling hills of the Oxfordshire Cotsworlds, near the market town of Bi...

Next weekend the FA Cup final will be contested at Wembley stadium, the home of football, the closing chapter of another dramatic season of English league football. The trophy will be awarded to the winner of either Stoke City or Manchester City, two teams that I have no real association with other than the last time Manchester City played a final at Wembley it was against my Gillingham team, managed at the time by Tony Pulis, ironically now in charge of Stoke City, which brings to life a wonderfully scripted sub-plot to what is already an intriguing game. Since Stoke City reached the final, blog posts and online analysis have focused on Tony Pulis, that day at Wembley and a recent interview on the BBC Sport website revealed some insight into the thoughts of the man and what it would be like to avenge that day nearly 12 years ago. Feeling nostalgic comes naturally to me, particularly when looking back at Gillingham Football Club’s finest ever moment. That game, Gillingham vs Manc...

Here is the full excerpt from the BBC vidiprinter of Gillingham vs Shrewsbury, League Two 2009 Playoff Final 1720: Congratulations, then, to Gillingham, commiserations to Shrewsbury. A cracking match with more drama than an Eastenders Christmas special. And if you thought that was heart-pounding, just you wait until tomorrow. The legend that is Stevo will be talking you through what promises to be a sensational day of Premier League ups and downs, with a pinch of League One play-off final action thrown in, so what ever you do - do not miss it. Nice one, legends. "Congratulations Gillingham. Bouncing straight back up after relegation is a lot easier said than done so hats off and good luck in League One next year." Liverpool_is_my_life on 606 "I feel for Shrewsbury; being a QPR fan I know how late, late play-off final goals feel and it's the worst feeling I've experienced, much worse than a relegation." SuperHoops10 on 606 1705: The Gillingham p...

I read a book last year entitled "Here we go Gathering Cups in May", a seven story account written by seven Liverpool supporters and their encounters of each of the seven European Cup finals Liverpool have been part of. The name of the book derived from a flag made by a Bootle lady named Mrs Margaret McDonald, who was thanked in the preface with the line "For gathering a needle, a thread, and a line from her head, before waving her son off to follow the red". Being a Gillingham supporter we are not accustomed to "gathering cups in May", indeed, if you are not a supporter of the "big four", namely Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool or Manchester Utd the chances of picking any silverware at the end of a football season is an alien concept. However, each club outside the Premier League does have the chance to cover themselves in glory by either winning their league outright, or as the case may be for most finishing within the top six or seven and ent...

Being the son of a fanatical football fan means that more than likely, it's a case of when you start going rather than if . In Oliver's case it was always inevitable, although I hadn't planned on it being so soon. The plan had been to mention football as much as possible and tell him everything about the Gills and put it off until he was five years old so that I could build up the anticipation and excitement. On his fifth birthday he would go to his first Gills game - as a mascot, making his Gills debut by leading the side out at the hallowed turf of Priestfield. As always with best intentions and perfectly laid plans, they go awry in amongst a set of strange circumstances. When Gillingham drew Stockport at home in the FA Cup second round it wasn't exactly a tie that caught the imagination, but a home game I would not have wanted to miss. I had decided to go for the pay on the day option, not imagining a sell out by any means! But as the game drew closer I b...