Gillingham will be looking to end their season on a high this Saturday after failing in their promotion quest.
The Gills had high hopes of a promotion season – with a minimum aim of making the play-offs – but they’ll be playing League 2 football for another year and finish the current campaign at Priestfield against a Doncaster Rovers side who are hoping to seal a top-seven place.
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Doncaster have found form at the right time to storm into the play-off mix while the Gills have won just twice in their final 10 games to leave them as also-rans this term.
Upbeat boss Stephen Clemence knows it’s not been good enough, but is determined to give fans hope that better times are ahead under his management.
He said: “One game left, it’s a home game and let’s try and send our supporters off happy for the summer.
“My aim is to give them something to look forward to next season.
“The team we saw in the first half (at Mansfield last Saturday) is nearer to where I want us to be.
“Adding to the performance last week there are some good signs with some of our players back and some of the players that I need in the team.
“That is a positive, but we still have plenty of recruitment to do in the summer as well.
“Doncaster will be coming to our place with something to play for, and we have to make sure we do our job properly. We want to finish as high as we can, we’re on our home patch and we want to send our supporters home happy.”
League 2 table
Reflecting on missing out on the play-offs, he said: “I am disappointed, of course, obviously, I want to be successful.
“I want to be successful every season, whether I have been a player, a coach, or now as a head coach, but we have come up short on too many occasions.
“Have we been good enough? We probably haven’t. We can do well on our day against anybody but we have also let ourselves down on a number of occasions and that inconsistency doesn’t normally take you to the top of the table, at any level.
“We have to make sure we find that consistency, find more goals in our team, find more creativity and I think we will have a better team if we do that.
“People will say we have under-achieved this season, and we might have done, but also we might not have been good enough. We have to look at ourselves, myself included.
“We have to make sure we are better as a football club next season, we want to be celebrating like Mansfield are at the end of next season at our place, that’s got to be our aim.”
The Gills lost 2-1 at Mansfield last Saturday, a team who have finished in the automatic promotion places. Clemence’s side were leading 1-0 before conceding twice late on.
He said: “They have good footballers all over the pitch. They have people who can run, got lots of energy, goals from different places and they are a threat.
“They have big Aden Flint playing centre-half who has had an unbelievable career and has played a lot higher than this level.
“They are a good footballing team but we more than matched them.
“We were the better team for large periods of that game but we still didn’t get the result. I can be pleased with a lot of it, but I am not happy about the result again and I can only apologise to everyone for that, but we go again.
“We will try and finish as high as we can and try and give our supporters something to shout about this weekend.
“Doncaster are a good team, a good manager.
“I know (manager) Grant (McCann) very well and he has done well for a number of years.
“I look forward to taking him on and yes I might know him but I will be wanting to win and he will be wanting to win and that’s what it is all about.”
