Sturrocks left swindon.

[gosling]

lol why do swindon & gills fans hate eachother -
is it cos you're both gyppos with wheels on your house?

anyway plymouth have done well to get sturrock back, i think they're going places...

[skins]

Im so annoyed Holloway left! I dont want Sturrock!

[PlKEY-ARMY]

**** gills pikey

shhh haha whos laughing now?

lol why do swindon & gills fans hate eachother -
is it cos you're both gyppos with wheels on your house?

anyway plymouth have done well to get sturrock back, i think they're going places...

if you have time read this:

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Why do we hate Swindon so? Eccles takes us back 25 years to tell how the ill feeling began.

Once upon a time, a home match against Swindon was just another fixture. We’d played them pretty regularly since 1895, and in all that time they’d only won at Priestfield four times. In 1969, when they beat Arsenal to win the League Cup, their next match was a 3-1 defeat by us. An easy touch really. We were probably one of their bogey sides.


Then, 25 years ago, all that changed. A game which Bob Wilson described with monumental understatement on Match Of The Day as ‘a fiery match’ put ‘We hate Swindon’ and its variants into the Gills vocabulary for ever. How can this be? Why is a club 100 miles away and whom we haven’t played for 17 years held in such contempt? Time usually heals wounds, but with Swindon our contempt has, if anything, grown as the years have passed. You need to be at least 35 to remember clearly exactly what happened, so memories and legends have obviously been handed down with relish to younger and newer Gills fans. What was it really like to have actually been at Priestfield that day?


In 1961, when I was 15, I packed up keeping a Gills news-cuttings scrapbook and started writing up my own match reports. I was able to write exactly what I thought about things that had happened during the match, rather than preserve the views of someone from Fleet Street. So for those who are students of Gillingham history, and for humble seekers after truth, here is an unvarnished and unedited account from an eyewitness in Block C of the Main Stand, written on the evening of the day that will live in infamy.


Saturday, March 31st 1979


Division 3 - Gillingham 2-2 Swindon Town


Attendance:- 9,460


Team - Ron Hillyard, Charlie Young, Mickey Barker, John Overton, Mark Weatherly, Billy Hughes, Terry Nicholl, Dean White, Ken Price, Danny Westwood, Tony Funnell. (Substitute ‘ not used ‘ Gary Armstrong)


Grand National Saturday didn’t deter a crowd of nearly 10,000 packing into Priestfield to see a promotion clash between fourth-placed Gills and sixth-placed Swindon. Two games in hand for the visitors made this a must-win for us.


Gills got off to a tremendous start with a goal in the first minute. Sweeping towards the Rainham End from kick-off, Allen turned Ken Price’s shot round the post. Terry Nicholl’s corner on the right was headed on by Mark Weatherly and Dean White forced the ball in at the far post.


Gillingham pressed their advantage with some storming football but they were continually frustrated by referee Hutchinson, who took almost every opportunity to ruin play by excessive whistle-blowing. We were obviously in for an afternoon of appalling refereeing. Practically every Gills move was being stopped for some petty infringement, while Swindon’s centre-half Aizlewood was clogging at every opportunity and getting away with it. Swindon’s captain Ray McHale was yapping and pointing over every decision.


In a rare Swindon attack, Ron Hillyard was amazingly booked following his beating away a chance when Swindon’s Rowland got through, but after twenty-five minutes Gillingham got the second goal they deserved when Danny Westwood went clear of defenders and lifted the ball over Allen’s head from the edge of the box.


Swindon got off the floor well. Within a minute they had cut the arrears when Mayes headed in a centre from Miller, and after thirty-five minutes they were level when an angled shot by Carter eluded Ron Hillyard and went in the corner.


Striving to get back on top, Terry Nicholl was booked for a foul when he failed to connect with a tackle (ridiculous) and then two minutes from half-time Danny Westwood was clattered in the back for the umpteenth time by Aizlewood, about ten yards from the Gordon Road dug-out. To ironic cheers, the referee reached for his card to finally book the thuggish defender, McHale was in there again mouthing off, a card went in the air, Danny Westwood trotted off and sat down on the bench. As he did so, the fans around the dug-out started to go ballistic, and it slowly sunk in to a stunned and then increasingly incensed crowd that for some inexplicable reason Westwood had actually been sent off!


Priestfield was in uproar and things really started to turn ugly. The normally placid Main Stand erupted into a torrent of booing and invective - the first time that I have ever heard volleys of four-letter words hurled by the great and the good in B Block, and no-one batted an eyelid! The abuse which Hutchinson got as he slunk from the field was staggering, but fully deserved, as police struggled to clear a way for him through about twenty fans who had leapt out of the Enclosure seats to get at him.


During half-time Steve Bruce and Damien Richardson, who were sitting nearby, went down to the dressing-room to see what had happened. ‘McHale said Danny was swearing at the ref so he got sent off’ said Steve when he returned. ‘The lads are furious. The gaffer’s trying to calm them down.’ Then the teams reappeared ‘ Gills to a standing ovation, Swindon to fierce boos, followed by Hutchinson. The old boy in the front row was ready for him. He had tied his Gills scarf into a noose and swung it down over the tunnel on the end of his walking stick ‘ right in Hutchinson’s face!


The second half was played amidst a storm of booing and abuse whenever Swindon attacked, and as Hutchinson continued to give a series of rotten decisions against the Gills. But Gillingham, urged on by the crowd, held out well. Ken Price, playing a lone hand up front, was everywhere, looking for the ball, and looking for a few of the opposition. McHale was keeping a low profile, but Ken got a goal-like cheer ‘ and a booking ‘ when he flattened him in the centre-circle. Things were really hotting up.


Then after sixty-three minutes - the flashpoint. Ken Price tangled with Aizlewood about ten yards in from the Redfern Avenue terrace. Hutchinson ran up reaching for his cards. Ken was going to be sent off, and without doubt Priestfield was on the point of a full-scale riot. Suddenly a middle-aged man appeared from nowhere, was on the pitch and decked the referee with a right hook, knocking him clean out. Police, trainers, and caring Ken were quickly there to bring the referee round, whilst the middle-aged man was led quietly away in front of the Main Stand, where we stood as one to give him an ovation, receiving a thumbs-up from him in acknowledgement. All of us that is except Doctor Grossmark, who stoically sat in the Directors’ Box whilst everyone around was cheering wildly, knowing that Gills were in deep trouble with the FA. And slowly that fact began to dawn on everyody else, and things started to calm down a bit.


On the field, the attack on the referee seemed to put the players on their best behaviour and there was little goalmouth action at either end. Five minutes from time Ken Price almost grabbed the winner with a tremendous header from Terry Nicholl’s centre, and in the finish it seemed that Swindon were struggling against our ten men. Then, with the crowd gathering in the Enclosure for a final outpouring of contempt at the referee, he suddenly blew the whistle by the players tunnel and immediately disappeared.


So Gills were cheated out of a vital point by contemptible refereeing and gamesmanship from McHale in particular. We certainly haven’t heard the last of this game, and we have to play at the County Ground in the return on May 5th.

some fierce rivalry between us

[Jamie!]

Heard that the proposed takeover to stabalise Swindon has fell-through again. Few Swindon fans on TFF are saying that you had a deadline of 2PM today to get it all sorted out and you didn't and that a winding-up order will be issued on Monday which will put the club out of exsistence.

Hope you pull through and survive.