Gillingham Football Club

Gills number two visits local venue to take training...

Gills Assistant Manager John Schofield helped prepare the Rainham School for Girls for the Area Finals in the npower Girls Cup by taking a training session with the squad earlier this week.

John spent an hour with the team as they prepared for their trip on Wednesday, and said he thoroughly enjoyed getting out in to the community and having the chance to work with young players.

Speaking exclusively to the club’s official website he said: “It was brilliant, the grass roots of the football community are fantastic and it’s what it’s all about. If that isn’t right then what we do day in, day out, you don’t have people to watch you perform.

“Seven or eight young girls are playing in massive competition at Millwall, they have earnt the right to be there and there is a great buzz around the place. Everybody is excited about it; it’s a bit like being in the Gills dressing room.

“It’s part and parcel of what we do, I suppose you could say you are out selling your brand but people need to see us out and about, it’s what we do and apart from the supporters can get time off to watch us train nobody sees it.

“It isn’t just a case of turning up on a Saturday, there is a lot of thought and a process that goes along with it but to have people watch your work it’s nice and it’s exciting.

“We are very proud in the way that we do things and we like to have people watch us work. That shows everything that we are about.

“They are of varied abilities and like young people at that age there is a varied height, there might be three or four months difference in them but they can two foot taller or two foot shorter.

“Some of the quality they had in possession and the ball manipulation skills and their technical abilities were great and a lot of credit goes to the coaches that work with them week in, day out.

“Luckily we were invited to come up but the people that work with them deserve the credit for the skill that we have seen.”