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Gillingham first team coach Nicky Southall writes exclusively for the KM Group

Nicky Southall
Nicky Southall

I don't know what it is with this club but we really are a last-day team and we head to Chesterfield needing a result.

The Macclesfield performance last weekend let a lot of people down and we all felt that, especially the management team.

We feel it was a missed opportunity and ultimately we just weren’t good enough.

Over the last few weeks the players seem to have gone into their shells at home and maybe some people haven’t handled the occasion. It was another chance that we didn’t take but fortunately we have another.

It’s our last chance now.

I was involved in the draw against Stoke the time we managed to stay up and then the 2-2 draw against Nottingham Forest when we were relegated on the last day.

We always seem to do things the hard way here and it would be nice to just have things over with before the end of the season for a change.

We have to be positive against Chesterfield and apply ourselves in the right way. We’ve been playing well away of late and it’s crazy the way the form has turned around and we can’t put our finger on why.

We were fantastic at Rotherham and then the same team play Macclesfield and lose 4-2. We gave the first goal away with a mix-up and then we got edgy after that and it was just one of those days.

Myself and the gaffer saw the Cardiff game just a few days later and in a game everyone thought they would win against Middlesbrough, they ended up 3-0 down in 20 minutes and it was so similar. It’s strange how it happens sometimes.

We’ve now got a job to do at Chesterfield but whatever happens the chairman has already told us, the management and players, that he has been happy with the season, especially the second part of it.

The players have put in a right good shift and after the first part of the season we’ve turned things around. We’ve been in promotion form recently but those injury problems just don’t seem to go away.

We’ll miss Barry Fuller this weekend after he was on the end of a bad challenge against Macclesfield. Thankfully it’s just bad bruising and that’s a relief. He is a big player for us, even though he didn’t start the last two games.

The injuries have been continuing right up until the end of the season.

We’ve seen Dennis Oli in and out of the team, Chris Palmer out, Andy Barcham was out for four months, Kingy and Garry Richards have had problems, Danny Spiller has been out and so has Curtis Weston.

The list goes on and, when you have injuries to your key players, it does hurt you.

We just hope that we can get the right result now at Chesterfield. We will have our phones on and no doubt someone will have their internet working so we will know what’s going on elsewhere but we just need to concentrate on our own performance.

We need to get a result and then hope other results go for us.

With a bit of luck it could happen and we’ll be in the play-offs.

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