The Official Shrewsbury Town Match Thread (Sponsored by Looney Tunes "for all your "That's All, Folks" needs")

We've made it! Finally, the last game of a momentous season is upon us, with a fascinating final day tussle against Shrewsbury Town as both sides seek to secure the heady heights of an 18th placed finish, a position none of us could have believed possible before the season began... With a bit of luck elsewhere, we could even go one further by nabbing 17th spot from Cheltenham, but we shouldn't set our hearts on such an incredible ending for fear of maybe missing out in the unlikely event of a home defeat...

So here we are, just one more 90 minutes to be endured and we can happily write this season off with a likely lowest-placed finish for over 30 years and, at best, a five point reduction from what was a terrifyingly similar 2024/25 campaign. These last two seasons on the pitch have offered some of the lowest lows in the club's history, with the last three months of results being so heinously awful from a regular thrashing perspective as to be the unquestionable nadir of at least my time supporting the club. As has been done to death, when we didn't have a pot to piss in and were down at the bottom, we weren't rolling over to have our collective tummies tickled every other week and at least finished each game with our heads held high. You would struggle to say the same about the current lot, whose heads should be hung in shame after recent results.

However, we do now have a pot to piss in and yet it's got progressively worse to become as bad as it's ever been on the pitch. The poor Galinsons. Even in their wildest nightmares, they couldn't have dreamt that their purchase of an unfashionable and dilapidated fourth tier football club down on its luck could go so disastrously. Fling a few quid at it and romp to success, League Two can't be that hard, it's all present and correct to be Championship-bound in short order, Shirley? Wrong. That initial feelgood factor has long since been bled dry by the utter garbage served up on the pitch by a huge cast of underperforming, broken, past-it or insufficiently talented players and has been overseen by a selection of managers, some more out of their depth than others. The days of record shirt sales, record season ticket sales, record advertising sales and record hospitality sales have now passed, as the commercial team will no doubt discover over the summer. The fan buy-in that achieved those records and that still miraculously traipses up and down the country each week, more from habit than any tangible enjoyment factor, has been betrayed by many of those pulling on OUR shirt just to go through the motions. 

We're promised big changes this summer, although the exact nature of those is yet to be communicated from upstairs. For me that change would encompass the vast majority of the squad and the entire management team, but as is well-evidenced on here, every poster has their own take on what change is needed to get this misfiring club back on an even keel. What is not in dispute is that significant change is absolutely required unless we want next season to complete the worst trilogy since the theatrical release of The Human Centipede 3 (for the uniformed, don't Google it), although the level of shit we've already collectively witnessed might just outdo those films. 

The potential highlight for Saturday should be the publication of the very, very short retained list. If there's any justice in the world it would be hollered with glee by Doug Hudson at the final whistle, although, in reality, he could well be speaking to an empty stadium by that point as you'd have to be a Grade A masochist to hang around for the post-match lap of (dis)honour. It's almost as unnecessary an undertaking as the now shit-canned End of Season Awards dinner, which has at least prevented the need to spend the entirety of next season's transfer budget purchasing wooden spoons...

Ainsworth's former charges are apparently bringing a few hundred along tomorrow to yell abuse at the man himself. Although it seem a little weird to travel halfway across the country just to shout at a bloke who left your club for what seemed a better option at the time, there isn't much else to do in Shropshire, so I hope they enjoy this cup final more than they did the Play-off Final of 2009. Whatever they've got planned for him, he's already had far worse from our lot this season, so it'll be water off a duck's back for him at this stage. Regardless of the result, he'll be smirking his way through one final post-match interview, blathering on about "empty tanks", the loathsome two-year plan, "big changes" and the need to be better and other such obvious, hollow nonsense.

The head to head has Gills trailing 20 wins to 26 since the first meeting back in 1951. The last two visits from the Shrews have ended in dour 0-0s, and a similar outcome tomorrow would at least be an improvement on the miserable defeats witnessed in five of our last seven outings at Priestfield. For the highlights we go back to the final day of the 1996/97 season, one where we won our last three matches of the season without conceding to finish 11th in our first season back in the third tier following promotion. Ade Akinbiyi proved why he'd been a good-buyi with a brace in a 2-0 win.

Before I conclude, best wishes to Glenn Morris for his services in his time with us, rarely let us down and very often kept us in games, or at least kept the scores down. To the rest of the likely departures, good luck finding new clubs, you've undoubtedly made it harder for yourselves with your time here, you had our full backing and then squandered it. The fans did their best, they turned up every week, did you? I hope to see very, very few of you wearing our shirt next season.

So there you have it. One more aimless, shapeless, passionless slog to go, a total cull of players and then 2025/26 can be consigned to history. Just one more misstep in the underwhelming history of Gillingham Football Club, but, as the old saying goes, there's always next season...

Enjoy the game, and for one final time this season (and hopefully forever for nearly every player)...

COYG!!!