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The Shouting Men: Gillingham striker Cody McDonald writes exclusively for the KM Group

I was buzzing to be back playing on Tuesday (at Walsall) but we were hurting after the defeat.

I haven’t seen the dressing room like that for a long time. We felt it was a good chance to put ourselves in the mix for automatic promotion but we came up short.

We have to look over our shoulders a bit but we know it’s in our own hands and I am pretty sure that before the season started, had we known we would be going into the last five games in the play-off places, we would have taken it all day long.

Gillingham's Cody McDonald celebrates scoring at Shrewsbury on Saturday. Picture: Barry Goodwin
Gillingham's Cody McDonald celebrates scoring at Shrewsbury on Saturday. Picture: Barry Goodwin

We have the chance to go again on Saturday and put things right. If we get a win, then it puts us in a strong position again.

The lads came back in on the Wednesday and we had a bit of head tennis and tried to forget about it. It was a tough to take as we thought it was a game we would get three points from.

We had the chance to score from the spot and it is not nice missing. I have had that feeling but it does happen – the best penalty takers in the world miss. You have to give credit to the keeper as well, Luke Norris has hit it well.

Luke was gutted but kept his head for the rest of the game and got his goal. It was a lovely finish and maybe had that happened in the 90th minute, with five to go, you never know. The referee told me there was only 30 seconds left after we scored. It was a great finish, though and that should give Luke confidence.

It won’t affect us this weekend. There are strong characters in the dressing room and we have to put things like that behind us and go again.

It was nice to be starting a game again. I came back ahead of schedule after an injury that might have done me for the rest of the season.

The surgery went well, the medical team here of Roachy and Harry kept me on my toes.
The injury came from a tackle at Millwall. I went down and got a penalty but when I got to my feet, there was a shooting pain in the side of my foot.

I played on until half-time but I took my boot off to have a look and it had swollen so much I couldn’t put it back on! An X-ray the next day confirmed it was a break.

At first we didn’t think it would need surgery but then I was told it could be 14, 16 or even 18 weeks out. It was hard to take at the time but we did it in 14 and it feels good now.

Read the full column in Friday's Medway Messenger

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