Head coach Stephen Clemence was delighted with the Gillingham players as they did the business once the lights went back on at Priestfield.
There wasn’t much to get the crowd going in the first hour of the League 2 match between the Gills and Wimbledon on Tuesday night, but after a stoppage due to a power cut and a floodlight outage, the game came alive.
Report: Gillingham 1 Wimbledon 0
The winner came in the 107th minute of a much-delayed game. Substitute Macauley Bonne got his head to Jonny Williams’ free-kick and Conor Masterson was there to guide the ball home.
“I am delighted to get the victory,” said the Gills boss, as his side climbed back into the play-off places with the win.
“I know we can play better, I thought we probably played better at Tranmere (in a 3-1 defeat on Saturday) but we have just beaten a team who beat another team [Notts County] at the top end of the table and scored four goals against them at the weekend, so they are a good team.
“I am really pleased to come away with a 1-0 victory and I am delighted to get a clean sheet, we worked hard to get to that.
“We can create more, but we also have to respect the opposition and remember there are teams that are going to set out to stop us. They will see what we have done in the last few games, now it is up to us to find different solutions to those problems when teams block us up.
“The lads were fantastic, a 1-0 victory against a team who are close to us in the table, they were above us before the night but we have beaten them at home and I am absolutely delighted with the boys.
“I remember those days myself as a player, tight games, not easy, you have to show real test of character and I thought to a man they all stood up to be counted and the subs that came on were great as well.
“The three points are the most important thing. I know we can play better but I also knew before the game, and I told the boys, that Wimbledon have plenty of strengths in their armoury as well and so I felt the game would be tight.
“If you go back to the Salford game (which Gills won 3-1) I think everything clicked into place in that second half but it isn’t always going to click into place.
“We’re asking the boys to do new things here, sometimes they will get it wrong, but when you try new things it is okay to get it wrong and the more times you do it, the more you practice it, the better you’ll become.
“The main thing is that won and I am really pleased we got the three points.”
