Extreme Weather at Priestfield | Vital Football

Extreme Weather at Priestfield

jogills

jogills

Vital Football Hero
On a foggy day I got to thinking about extreme weather at Priestfield. No wimpy postponements but games played in wind, rain and snow the more ridiculous the better. I have a distant memory of a game against Swansea or Cardiff in thick snow the groundsman elected to clear just the markings and we played on several inches of dry snow.

How about this 60s photo of Freddie Cox.


httpsps://www.na3t.org/road/photo/GM00065-02d1
 
Can remember a midweek game against Torquay (iirc) , probably early 90's in the Sherpa Van Trophy (or whatever it was called that year) being played where you couldn't see past the half way line for the fog. Game got completed but couldn't see any of the action from the RE until the play came within 50 yards of us.
 
Captainreblue said:
Can remember a midweek game against Torquay (iirc) , probably early 90's in the Sherpa Van Trophy (or whatever it was called that year) being played where you couldn't see past the half way line for the fog. Game got completed but couldn't see any of the action from the RE until the play came within 50 yards of us.
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Did we win?
 
jogills said:
On a foggy day I got to thinking about extreme weather at Priestfield. No wimpy postponements but games played in wind, rain and snow the more ridiculous the better. I have a distant memory of a game against Swansea or Cardiff in thick snow the groundsman elected to clear just the markings and we played on several inches of dry snow.

How about this 60s photo of Freddie Cox.


httpsps://www.na3t.org/road/photo/GM00065-02d1
Click to expand...


I recall a home game v Swansea in the snow. Tiny crowd there, one of our lowest ever league attendances IIRC. Thank goodness for orange footballs.
 
PhilK66 said:
Did we win?
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Couldn't have told you at the time let alone 30 years on!

Having looked through Gills scrapbook I think it must have been Hereford rather than Torquay (we played Torquay at home the match after) in 90-91, if it was we lost 1-0.
 
I went to a game a Dagenham v Scunny where the storm was so bad the players left the pitch. It felt like the stadium was going to fall apart.It was quite a game too.Deon Burton and Luke Norris got on the scoresheet.
Little sign of the storm on the highlights but you can see with the last goal the conditions had changed a fair bit.
 
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Probably not the worst weather but the coldest I've ever been was watching an appalling 2 0 home defeat to Exeter circa Feb '73. Didn't help that I was wearing Green Flash plimsolls. Anyone remember them?

Derby cup game called off in freezing conditions half way through iirc about 25 years ago.

Missed half the game v Arsenal circa 1967 cos of the fog. At wrong end. Only knew we'd scored by the crowd noise. Saw their equaliser clearly.
 
Green Flash plimsolls, quality. I can feel the springy walk and just bursting to break into a run kick a plastic football and hold my arm aloft but not straight. The Yeo celebration, which tells you just how old the memory is
 
I was about to say the league cup replay against Arsenal too. I was a program seller at that game and was sold out long before the game started because of the large crowd (around 18k I believe) so I headed off back to the office (between the main stand and the right side of the Rainham End), handed over the dosh and then took my usual place on top of the said office.

As a young teenager, my eyes were perfect but even so, I could only just make out the halfway looking towards the town end. The ground was packed, they scored and no-one really knew that they had..... we scored and the news went around the ground like a Mexican wave. The first roar from the jammy buggers who had actually seen it and then slowly the rest of us realised what had happened and started our (what is now known as) happy dance. I almost fell off the roof.......
 
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alex_farrells_left_p said:
I was about to say the league cup replay against Arsenal too. I was a program seller at that game and was sold out long before the game started because of the large crown (around 18k I believe) so I headed off back to the office (between the main stand and the right side of the Rainham End), handed over the dosh and then took my usual place on top of the said office.

As a young teenager, my eyes were perfect then but even so, I could only just make out the halfway looking towards the town end. The ground was packed, they scored and no-one really knew that they had..... we scored and the news went around the ground like a Mexican wave. The first rroar from the jammy buggers who had actually seen it and then slowly the rest of us realised what had happened and started our (what is now known as) happy dance. I almost fell off the roof.......
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20,566
 
Jerryattrick said:
20,566
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You're quite right Jerryattrick- I've just looked it up in the Gills bible and should have done with the first posting. I didn't think it was worth the effort of going down two flights of stairs to the bookcase where I keep my Gills stuff and then trying to dodge the missus asking me what I am doing up in the man-cave. I'll do better next time.

Actually, thinking about this has made me decide to have another good gander in the Home of the shouting men.....I am still grateful to Roger Triggs and Andy Bradley for having taken the time to put it all together. Who needs Ludlum when you have that on the bookshelf?
 

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Plymouth at home, 96-97 season, won 4-1. Akinbiyi scoring on his home debut.

Gills fans: “We want 5! We want 5!”

Plymouth fans: “We want fog! We want fog!”

That was the best and most extreme fog. There was Stevenage away some point late 2000s, early 2010 but at least you could see half of the pitch. With the Plymouth game you couldn’t even see Big Fat Jim, even when standing at the front of the Rainham End.

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Scunthorpe the other year was ridiculous. An absolute monsoon halting the game for half an hour, with Marquis sweeping the water out of the penalty area alongside a chef. Got back in time for the train back, though.

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The Derby one still grates me. Alcock calling off the game after one Derby player, just Asanovic, kept slipping over. We were all over them.

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I remember a Cambridge away game, mid- to late-90s, with a storm going off around the stadium but not actually descending on it.

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The Luton game after that Fulham game. The pitch was a swamp.
 
Not Priestfield but I was en-route to Walsall for an evening midweek game. Somewhere around Birmingham, the radio announcer states that the game was off. High winds had blown part of the stands down and it was unsafe.
Obviously pre Bescot and maybe sped up the development of the new ground.
 
Some good stuff here. On the subject of the great reference work I can report that Roger Triggs retains an encyclopaedic knowledge of all things Gills. His recall of things NG may have suffered in common with most of us older fans but he's still a reliable source of arcane Gills info.
 
What about extreme heat? Anyone recall an early season match under a sweltering August sun?
 
The foggiest game I ever saw at Priestfield was an FA Cup tie in Jan 1993 vs Huddersfield. There doesn't seem to be any video footage, sadly, so I don't know how it compares to the others mentioned. I remember Harvey Lim's goal being under siege in the second half but not really knowing what was going on.

The coldest I ever saw was the Derby game that's been mentioned above. From my memory the pitch was lethal in the second half and it was stupidly cold in the Rainham End.

The wettest was in the tin pot Football League trophy. I think it was 1991 vs Hereford. There was also a game vs Luton when Carl Asaba scored after the ball stopped in a puddle.

Extreme heat is harder. I can think of a couple elsewhere, but it really doesn't get hot in Gillingham.
 
Gills 58 said:
Derby cup game called off in freezing conditions half way through iirc about 25 years ago.
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I remember the Derby Cup game - think they were Prem League at the time. It was cold to start and by half time completely froze over with the ref blowing the whistle about half way through the second half.

I also remember an FA Cup game v Cardiff in the early 80s where we played in the snow and the Rainham End were lobbing snowballs at the Cardiff keeper. I'm not one of those that granstands like a lot and says "my first game was" (mainly Prem League "fans" who have seen "their" team about twice in their life) as going to my first match at the age of 5 or 6, I simply can't remember who it was against. However, it may have been that Cardiff game - the memory probably only lives on due to the snowball incident. I only found out it was Cardiff recently through a Youtube clip that included the snowball incident.

Funnily, enough a lot of these seem to be FA Cup games - another I remember was late 80s v Huddersfield. The pitch was frosty and completely rock hard icy at the start and didn't change all match with the players slipping everywhere.

I also remember a mid 90s match v Walsall that was called off as the fog game in and you couldn't see the centre spot from anywhere in the stands.

It's easy to think that it's just in the "olden days", i.e. 20, 30, 40+ years ago that players played in extreme conditions. However, I rememeber a match from probably about 10 years ago v Oldham (I think), where the pitch and the whole of Kent was covered in a foot of snow. Given being in the more modern era, I was amazed the match went ahead - not just because of the state of the pitch and ground, but the paths and roads in and around the ground and Medway and Kent generally. A few pics below. I seem to recall we won 4-1, so it was worth getting it on!
 

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