As we move towards 2026, we have been asking our reporters for their highlights and indeed low lights of 2025. Next up is Mike Green.
2025 – the year of ridiculous highs, lows and sights or in other words just another year on the counties football – and for that matter cricket – fields…
My first football encounter of 2025 was undoubtedly my lowest point – not even Sittingbourne’s heartbreaking penalty shoot-out defeat in the play-off Final came close to what I witnessed at MEMS Priestfield on January 3.
To start with its a tough time of year for me personally but then to attend the first Gillingham/Bromley league game played in Medway and see the side that I have supported since 1978 put in THAT performance… my broken heart shattered well beyond the point of breaking… Yes, the night was summed up by poor Elliott Nevitt’s penalty that I think was last seen heading for Faversham, and it is the closest I have ever come to slagging my team off in any Gills report I have ever written for this or any website.
In short it was without doubt certainly in the top three of the poorest most pathetic performances I have seen from my heroes… indeed whilst writing this, the only performance that comes anywhere near was a 4-1 capitulation to Bury, Boxing Day 1992! I am sure that colleagues Mr. Head and Mr. Doig may disagree (Colin certainly had a massive grin on his face that night) but from a home perspective it was horrible! So just days into the sporting year, I hit rock bottom – my worst moment (well 90 of them) Gills 0-3 Bromley!
I was told once to tell the story of any game through your own eyes either as a supporter or a reporting supporter and with a potential bias for the Kent side. Maybe that’s why I hate writing derby reports, but that night, and into the following morning, draft after draft was written and deleted as I really did not want to be banned from a place that will always be my spiritual football home.
As a guy, Mark Bonner was terrific and a great guy to get on with but clearly there was something wrong that night and the Galinson’s acted and introduced John Coleman to the faithful and what a difference an old school football manager made is plugging the majority of the holes in the good ship Priestfield.
I’d come across Coleman in his Accrington days and knew what to expect, and his tirade after another dreadful display; this time at the furthest point away from home base possible – Barrow in early February – showed everyone that his gruff northerner may only be around for a while, but he meant business. I lost count of the people I heard say “that’s more like Gillingham we know” from performances than had been witnessed in the previous week. Indeed, even though there was a midweek defeat to Morecambe, I left the ground – it was my first visit since the Bromley debacle – I left the ground that night almost in tears as that was a performance from MY Gillingham, and for giving me back “My Gillingham” John Coleman gets my Man of the Year!
Whilst all this was going on, I was involved more directly with the battle between Sittingbourne and Ramsgate for the South East crown that went to the wire but was edged and deservedly so by Ben Smith’s Rams. Who topped one hundred points and one hundred goals for the season!
All well and good – thing is though, and this isn’t me crying over spilled milk, for a side to finish second with over one hundred points yourself and still be subjected to the play-offs is not fair – period! In fact, if I had had a point for everyone from other teams who have said to me since “why didn’t you get promoted?” the Brickies would have had enough to go up!
Seriously though, Sittingbourne 2025 was an incredible ride – the run to the FA Trophy last eight was incredible enough but that win at Southend will long love with me as will with last eight game against Aldershot itself! But to lose in the play-offs again – boy that was tough to take! Losing to an 88th minute goal in the Semi’s the year before to Three Bridges was bad enough but penalties… I thought the Gills losing to Manchester City all those years ago was tough, but this was gut wrenching beyond belief.
Getting that close puts players in the shop window and how that happened at the Staxson Stadium. I did a tally up on opening day and of the sixteen named that day, there were ten, possibly eleven new faces. And as I write this in the period post-Christmas, Ryan Maxwell may not now be the Brickies boss but for the ride he and his players have given everyone involved in the club for the past three years, no football fan can say anything but a heartfelt thank you! Even in his final game as “Dar Brick” (internal joke!) only penalties stopped the Brickies winning at the Kufflink Stadium – incidentally watch for good things from Josh Wright’s side in 2026!
Anyway, after that horrible Friday night, I sort summer solace at the Spitfire Ground, and after accepting that Kent were in Division Two for a reason, and apart from that opening burst from Keith Dudgeon at Northampton – 7-36 is great in an innings but on debut for a side that couldn’t bowl anyone out for a couple of years… yes we were in heaven!
But we are Kent and we knew what was coming… injured in the warm-up for a home debut and then not seen again!
As I said, we are Kent!!! Missing the Rhino after that incredible start was always going to be a test, but I don’t think anyone could have expected the troubles. Yes there were the capitulations but we did have some fun too – albeit just in forty overs rather than closer to one hundred and still one of my highlight was watching the Big Screen with a group of Spitfires encircling on the outfield watching the Sharks from Sussex getting caught as our nemesis from Kennington (the London one, not the Ashford one) finally did us a favour and in the process of that very strange thirty/forty minute period seeing a still fully kitted out Jack Leaning jumping up and down; Jack had helped us over the line in our game and into the knock out bit of the Blast.
Sadly, that was the last time I saw Jack in Kent colours – don’t think I’m the only one desperately disappointed to see him head over the border to Hove. He has been nothing but an incredible servant of our Club in very troubled times and now perhaps after what was a bitterly disappointing summer whichever way you look at it, the Matt Walker knockers will finally shut up and give the little man the credit he deserved for keeping us at a top table that we clearly didn’t belong at, as we ALL one hundred percent now get behind a massively well respected former England captain, who will bring the good times back to Canterbury – won’t you Mr Hollioake!
They say that the older you get the more patient you become – no-one mentioned how cynical you become too! The return of Sam Northeast is surely going to be key, but my football voice is nagging at the back of my mind saying, “never go back”!
The fun thing about the way that our two main sports overlap especially in the summer, I found last summer when I lost count of the number of football people I knew who I saw at Canterbury as the start to the new football season began – to such an extent that I haven’t even mentioned the efforts of my Kent player of 2025 without whose goals the Lionesses wouldn’t have roared as loudly as they did.
Alessia Russo is a Kent girl and when she rose and powered home Chloe Kelly’s cross in the Euro Final, I am surprised they didn’t hear me at the Spitfire Ground from the Bauvill in Chatham from where I watched the Final.
Having two daughters has without doubt helped to get me totally into the women’s game and the thought that there could be other Lessie’s about right here in our county sends shivers. Ms Russo will be the first to admit that the path these days doesn’t have any many obstacles as they used to but the joy and delight of watching girls play football is something special, and if you haven’t made any New Year resolutions, go on, try just one ladies game – either Chatham at the Bauvill (quick plug Sunday January 19 at 1pm against York City Ladies for a place in the last sixteen of THE FA Cup), Charlton in WSL2, the City Lionesses who share my dear friend Colin’s manor at Bromley in the WSL or even going to that big place in northwest London for an international with seventy odd thousand other like-minded soles – you never know, you might actually enjoy it! Anyhow back to the subject matter and, my Kent player of 2025 is Alessia Russo.
My favourite moment of 2025 came where all footballing dreams should come true – Wembley Stadium on Sunday 11th May! I know that some of my colleagues will also probably have listed this as their highlight too – if not guys why not? – but it wasn’t just that a Kent side won a national cup (sorry why it’s called a Vase I will never know) but it was a because it was a club that I have a soft spot for and a manager who I first reported on in his early playing days who like a lot of managers has become a good friend down the years.
And to see Jamie Coyle walk down those steps at Wembley with a winner’s medal round his net, stopping to hug my daughter who OFF THE RECORD I think is Coylie’s number one fan, will live with me forever and be right up there with Roly Graham’s winning goal for Tommy Sampson’s Deal all those years ago! So, my moment of 2025 is Whitstable Town winning the ISUZU FA Vase.
PS – next time you see Coylie, can you ask him if I could have my scarf back, please that he’s wearing in all the post-match pictures… you know, it’s Christmas, he can keep it!!!
Like every other football fan, I always look forward to World Cup year but for the first time ever, I am not sure especially after seeing the draw for next summer a couple of weeks ago – those were two hours that no football fan will ever get back and I really felt for Jonathan Pearce who was supposed to be “commentating” for the BBC!
48 teams are far too many – my first finals I remember – Argentina in 1978 – had 16 and every game mattered. I understand FIFA want to expand the competition to include more, but forty-eight teams, playing in eight or nine different time zones is overkill to the FIFA degree. I think there are a couple of days where there are live games anywhere from 5pm to 6;45am the following morning dear old Chatham time as some of the games in Vancouver don’t start until 10pm!
Insomniacs will love it – will true football fans? Honestly, don’t know – guess we’ll have to wait until early June!!! So, what are England’s chances? Not getting out of the group will be a disaster, through the round of 32 should be OK – why the hell there’s a round of 32 I do not know – 72 group games to eliminate 16 teams?!?!?
Beyond that is anyone’s guess really as our national team baffle me – this will be the fourteenth World Cup I will have had the wall-chart up for and the twelfth that England will be a part of and I still can’t fathom them – my World Cup hope is that they go a long way and are right in the business end! Expectation though is somewhere in between in the knockout stages!
And finally, my hope for 2026 – sadly it’s got nothing to do with on field sports, it’s more to do with events off the field of play. Having lived through footballs dark days of the 1980s, I am becoming increasingly uneasy hearing of and seeing for myself some of the behaviour of some younger football fans in the past few months.
I’ve been at some games where school kids roam in a pack and who’s language is disgusting as is their attitude towards other people. Yes, the younger people are our sports future, but I for one do not want to see a repeat of the dark days of the 1980s where the authorities buried their heads in the sand until it was too late… The early signs are there again, please let us learn from our mistakes and not subject another generation to watching our national game, the best game in the world, from the inside of a steel cage.
Happy New Year everyone…