Defender Will Wright has been talking to KSN about his debut season in the Football League and how times are certainly changing at Priestfield.

It’s been a monumental full weeks for Gillingham and the home win over Hartlepool United was seen by many as the “start of a new season”.

“The Gaffer touched on that briefly prior to the game,” Wright admitted.

“You can see from his demeanour and others that it does feel like a new start for him. So, with where the two sides were that day with them five points in front of us at kick-off, that gap would have got too big if they beat us. We went out there to put on a show and get the three points and controlled the game.”

“It’s hard to say just how low the dressing room was before Christmas. When you look at it on the pitch, in terms of confidence, we were real low and sometimes it’s hard to come in and not have your chin on the floor – you’ve got to improve day to day and you’re not going to do that by sulking and moaning, so you come in and try to be as upbeat as possible, which to be honest, I did find to be quite difficult as I’m normally quite a bubbly character.”

“But sometimes you don’t want to bring that out when you know the severity of the job, so it is hard to get that balance of being professional to try and get yourselves out of the spot you’re in and also lift the mood as well – it really is quite tough to do that.”

“But I think confidence wise, we were probably right down there – thing is in football that can change so quickly and we’re almost at the other end of the spectrum now.”

“We knew that the points that we were adrift could be more with Cup games to come in hand, but playing the way we were, we didn’t really want the games in hand.”

“That’s changed of course now with two wins and two clean sheets, the games in hand now look in our favour – with that little cushion at the moment hopefully those games will see us get rid of the two points that we’re now adrift.”

Wright is still in his first season of League football since his move from Dagenham & Redbridge in the summer and he’s relishing playing with the likes of Max Ehmer and Glenn Morris at the heart of the Gills defence.

“Its massive,” he told us, “I don’t how many games Glenn has played… must be around seven hundred given the age of him,” Wright quipped, “and with Max touching three or four hundred too, it’s been great for me off the pitch as well – seeing what they do day in, day out and learning off that because that’s where I want to be in a few years time having played all those games.”

“At times at the start of the season I had to have a different mindset playing full back because I prefer to be in the middle of the pitch. Looking back to when I played full-back, especially against Leyton Orient when their winger was in such good form and he’s certainly not my ideal customer to deal with being so agile and he done me for one of the goals that night.”

“I just have to play the game as it is and play to the moment.”