Forty Year Itch

A fiery set of matches in 1979 resulted in red cards, police intervention and a grudge that goes beyond the two clubs’ geographical distance.

- Haydn Parry

Gillingham are the only team from Kent in the Football League and, bar three seasons from 1989 to 1992, it’s always been that way. In that brief period, Maidstone United joined us in Division Four and we experienced that rarest of things for us, a local derby. Matches against the “Squatters” (so-called for groundsharing at Dartford’s Watling Street) came to an abrupt end with their resignation from the League and liquidation. While there was a genuine edge to those few games against a fellow Kentish side, there is one club who really get us going – Swindon. It’s a rivalry that has nothing to do with proximity but is all because of two ugly flashpoint matches nearly 40 years ago.

The origin of it all was a fiery game at Priestfield on March 31, 1979, or, as one of my fellow Gills fans has it, “a day that will live in infamy”. Until then, we had played Swindon without much incident, unbeaten in the league at home by them in over 40 years (ten days before Swindon famously beat Arsenal 3-1 in the 1969 League Cup final in front of 98,000 at Wembley, they had lost 2-0 to the Gills at Priestfield). The context of the 1979 game was a tight Division Three promotion battle with Gillingham lying fourth in the table, while Swindon were sixth but with games in hand.