The 2007/2008 football season hasn’t even started and Gillingham are already tending to players with strains and knocks. It beggars belief how some footballers can pick up niggling injuries and be ruled out of opening games despite the coaching staff spending three weeks fine-tuning their players for the year ahead. If the Gills are to match their chairman’s belief and be promoted this season, the first-choice XI needs to stay largely injury-free. Finances have restricted Ronnie Jepson’s ambition to build a squad with cover in every position and therefore the news that Duncan Jupp and Craig Armstrong are already doubtful for tomorrow’s game with Cheltenham means supporters’ early optimism might need realigning.

If one of the Gills’ back line needs replacing tomorrow, options are clearly limited. Jepson could move midfielder Aaron Brown into left-back or bring in Sean Clohessy, but the team wouldn’t be at its best. It’s naive to think that any team will go a season without having injuries, but slight knocks, days before the are little short of pathetic. The first game sets a tone for the rest of the season and a good result is crucial for both fans’ and players’ confidence. Gillingham are facing a team with their own injury problems and a club who are, if newspapers were to decide, already assured of relegation in May. But because players have strained this or taken a knock to that, Gillingham are already unlikely to come away with three points tomorrow.

Due to ambitions of running in next year’s London Marathon, I have been researching the balloting process and recommended training schedule participants should undertake. In Marathon News, London’s quarterly marathon encyclopedia, stories are rife of runners who have completed the 26.2 mile course for 15 consecutive years. Many of these champions are 50 years old and have plans to continue running the course for many a year ahead. Never have these men and women pulled up with a niggling injury in the days before the run – year after year they still make it through, despite any strains their legs might get.

Footballers don’t seem to have the same mental strength to keep playing. Wages are high, players are over-paid and it’s difficult to be convinced that every player genuinely earns his way. A little twinge is a week off in football and with more and more workers throwing sickies in Britain each year, why wouldn’t footballers be the same?

Gillingham shouldn’t be too affected by absences tomorrow, and a win wouldn’t be against the odds, but over a season these niggles could prove costly. I hope in May 2008 that I’m not lamenting a fitter squad.

Every now and then I am startled by a bit of sporting news, one that shocks and excites me, one that tingles the edges of my nerve cells. Recently a Gillingham win would accomplish this feeling, notably due to its rarity, or in the past, hearing that an England footballer had finally recovered from his pre-major tournament injury scare, and was ready to miss a penalty in whatever game we were about to lose.

But this newsflash was a bit different. Kent revealed that they have obtained the bowling skill of Sri-Lankan Lasith Malinga for three weeks, including the Twenty20 finals on Saturday. Malinga is a fuzzy haired bowler and a fine one-day peformer at that and is certainly Kent’s biggest coup since Muralitheran’s late-season appearances a few years ago. He is an exciting signing and one that will give Kent an edge when they play Sussex in the semi-final this weekend. The team has improved incredibly this year, and Malinga’s arrival will only make Kent a good bet for the title.