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

Nicky Southall
Nicky Southall

If the confidence is not flying through the players' veins now, it never will be.

I know Hereford aren't having a particularly great time of it but to win 6-1 anywhere is a great achievement.

We now have to take that performance and confidence into the game against Burton on Saturday.

We fancy our chances this weekend and if we beat Burton, then we can go above them. In the last few weeks the boys have been buzzing in training and I have a great feeling for the coming weeks.

It's just a shame we couldn't have shared out Saturday's goals a bit with three at Hereford and three at Southend the previous Tuesday.

That Southend game was gut-wrenching because we had so many chances -12 on target - but came away losing 1-0.

Arguably we didn't play as well at Hereford but we scored six. At Southend, we had switched off at a set-piece and that's how we lost the game.

We told our players they whip corners into the near post area for the runner and that's what they did and they scored.

I noticed against Plymouth at the weekend they did exactly the same thing and scored again. That's why we get these games scouted. We told the players and they switched off.

It was unfortunate but we moved on and got a fantastic result on Saturday.

It was great to see young striker Stefan Payne on the scoresheet at Hereford. He has worked hard and when the lads have had days off, he has come in.

He wants to work and gets angry at times. I think sometimes he needs to go to anger management! But it's because he wants to succeed that he gets frustrated.

Hopefully, it's Stefan's first league goal of many and now with big Frank (Nouble) also in the team, we have plenty of options in attack.

It's a privilege to have been involved in Gillingham's two biggest Football League away wins.

The previous biggest was when Super Bob Taylor scored all five at Burnley in 1999 and I remember it well. It was an amazing game but quite painful for me.

Bob was the talisman at the time for Gillingham and it was a great team performance. I remember setting up three of the goals. Burnley were managed by Stan Ternent and another ex-Gills boss Ronnie Jepson (pictured right) was on the substitutes' bench.

Ronnie Jepson
Ronnie Jepson

Ronnie came on and I remember Stan shouting to him "get ******* on and give someone a ******* elbow."

It was me on the end of the elbow and I still have the imprint in the back of my head. He never did apologise.

He got plenty of stick here anyway and we called him Purple Ronnie because of the colour he went when he got angry.

He looked like Purple Ronnie that day and the steam was coming out of his ears.

Some people might have seen our club compete in the Crossbar Challenge on Sky Sports' Soccer AM.

I didn't get on television unfortunately as my effort was ruined when about 30 balls were kicked my way. I missed the bar but I did score!

Dean Rance hit the bar and everyone was buzzing after his lucky strike but the chairman didn't do so well. After turning up in his tracksuit, he tried a drop kick and must have had banana boots on because he missed by a mile!

Kent Matchday Live
Kent Matchday Live
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