Gillingham responded well to their disappointing 3-1 defeat at Leyton Orient the week before, by beating Luton 4-2 away from home in a top of the table clash.

The Gills started strongly and, within the opening half-an-hour, Mark Patterson's side were 3-0 up. On two occasions, a simple long ball was enough to undo the Luton defence, the first being controlled by Adam Birchall, who took it around the keeper and slotted it into the back of the net. The second was a long clearance from Chris Kiely, which beat the full-back and found Rory Hill, who took it into his stride and brilliantly lobbed the keeper to make it 2-0.

The Gills extended the lead just before the half-hour mark when good work, from school boy debutant Callum Day, resulted in the ball falling kindly for Tayler Thomas. The young forward had a shot but the ball bounced off of his shin and over the defender's head, where Birchall was waiting to volley superbly from 15-yards out.

Two or three minutes later, a Luton corner was not dealt with properly and it was flicked on at the near post , where a centre-forward side-footed from close range to bring them back into the game.

There was still time before the break for Thomas to fire a shot against the foot of the post from about 12 yards out on the angle.

Into the second-half, and The Gills were playing into the wind and up a slight hill. But, for the first 20 minutes of the re-start, they found it very difficult to get out of their half.Then, on 70 minutes The Hatters made it 3-2. Keeper Chris Kiely parried a cross/shot from the angle and their centre-forward reacted quickest to slot the ball into the back of the net. At this point Luton were firmly on the front foot and Gillingham were struggling to keep the ball out of their area.

However, after the second goal, The Gills started to get back into the game and Thomas came close with a shot that was tipped over the bar. There was also a decent opportunity for substitute Jacob Arnold-Smith, who saw a strong header fly over the bar from a corner.

With ten minutes left, Thomas was put through one-on-one with their full-back. He got past him and put a low cross into the six-yard area. The keeper could only get a hand to it and the ball ran into the path of Arnold-Smith, who simply walked it into the back of the net to hand The Gills a 4-2 victory.

Manager Mark Patterson was naturally delighted by the performance:

"It was an all-round good performance in difficult conditions. We dug in, held out and finished the game strongly to put us back into second in the table."

Team: Chris Kiely, Danny Walder (c), David Smart, Jack Payne, Liam Wybraniec (Rimmel Daniel 63), Tom Wynter, Tayler Thomas, Luke Rooney, Callum Day (Jacob Arnold-Smith 65), Adam Birchall, Rory Hill

The under-18's were not in action this morning. Their next fixture will be away, on March 8^th, to Southend.