With a fifth placed finish guaranteed, no matter what happened on the day, Russell Slade took advantage of the slightly meaningless nature of the match against Gillingham to take numerous of his senior first team players out of the equation for the day. The vast experience of Nathan Jones, Marcus Stewart, Terry Skiverton, Matthew Rose and Lee Morris were left at home, along with Chris Cohen. In their place were five players without a single Football League appearance to their name - Darren Behcet, Gavin McCallum, Craig Alcock and Jake Smeeton all landed on the bench whilst the youngest of them all, Tom Clarke, got his first ever Football League start.

Throw in Mark Lynch making his comeback from a pre-Christmas knee injury, Ishmael Welsh making his first appearance since returning from Weymouth and the sixteen selected looked closer to a Football Combination side than the one that has been a regular part of Yeovil's season. Terrell Forbes became captain for the day in the absence of Skiverton and Jones.

The first half was a low key affair, to say the least and the main bulk of it had an air of a post-season friendly. Both sides put themselves about fairly well, but there were few players willing to put their bodies on the line. One of the few that did was Terrell Forbes, who seemed to take great pride in taking on the captaincy and on one occasion threw himself in the way of a Gillingham drive from the edge of the area that had Steve Mildenhall diving for what he thought was going to be a difficult save, only to find that Terrell was doing his job for him - terrific defending!

Mildenhall was brought into action on a few occasions - most notably a terrific save from a Nicky Southall free kick midway through the half, whilst Yeovil's best attempt came when Anthony Barry weaved his way through the centre of the park. Unfortunately the end product was not as good as the initial move and Barry's shot fizzed over the crossbar. On the whole Gillingham were on top though without truly looking threatening but further attempts from Michael Flynn and Nicky Southall failed to trouble Mildy's goal. The travelling support probably wouldn't have been nervous today even if Gillingham's pressure did look threatening, but with Forbes and Scott Guyett in sparkling form there wasn't a lot to get particularly worried about.

The second half opened with the Glovers pressing a little more than they had been, even if for the opening 10 minutes they were still struggling to create chances. Tom Clarke, who had run himself into the ground, but with little return, was replaced by Daniel Webb just before the hour mark as the game showed signs of opening up for Yeovil.

It did so on 63 minutes with an excellent multi-team move. Ishmael Welsh won the ball out on the left flank and put a crossfield ball out onto the right flank which Wayne Gray did well to keep in play. The striker poked the ball back towards the edge of the box and a Gillingham defender helped the ball on its way and straight into the path of Jean-Paul KALALA, who struck a first-time sweet drive into the bottom corner of the net for his first ever goal for the club and to break the deadlock.

From there on, the Glovers never looked back and Gillingham seemed to almost pack up their bags and head on their summer holidays after having held their own for much of the first hour of the game. Five minutes after the first, came the second with Anthony Barry's superb 30 yard pass splitting the Gillingham defence in two and allowing Wayne GRAY the space to run onto the ball and gently lift and place it past home keeper Simon Royce and into the back of the net for what was pretty much 'game on' to 'game over' in the space of five minutes.

Ishmael Welsh left the field for Craig Alcock with 15 minutes left in the game and at 2-0 you could have forgiven the Glovers if they'd taken their foot off the gas with next week's game very much on their minds. The away stand had developed into a semi-drunken conga that the police and stewards seemed to not quite know how to deal with, and attention seemed to be more upon what the likes of Swansea City, Blackpool, Nottingham Forest and errr Boston United were doing on the day. But on the field of play, it was the away side that looked the more likely to extend their lead.

The nearest the home side came was when a Mark Bentley header from a Gillingham free kick flashed across the face of the Yeovil goal with no-one on hand to convert it. At the other end a through ball by Jean-Paul Kalala again set away Wayne Gray, who showed great strength to fend off Gills defender Ben Chorley, but could not squeeze the ball in at the near post with Simon Royce palming the ball out for a corner. A minute later and a flicked header by Mark Lynch threatened to loop in at the far post but again Royce got a palm in the way. Then Gray turned and shot just wide of the target for his last contribution of the game, leaving the pitch to be replaced by Gavin McCallum as Yeovil ended the game well on top.

A pretty much perfect day for the Glovers in their preparations for next weeks playoffs. Plenty of additional faces brought into the action, a nice comfortable win and with no bookings or injuries to cause concern and above all a performance that showed that even the "squad" players can play some part in Yeovil's fortunes if they are called upon. It was also a chance for players and supporters to relax a bit - it has been a tense end to the League One season and perhaps if there is one thing the Glovers will have over their three playoff rivals is that they will have had the most relaxing build-up to those semi-finals and lets hope that counts for something.

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