Gareth Ainsworth’s Gillingham finish their pre-season campaign at Isthmian Premier side Dartford on Saturday at Princes Park

Gillingham complete their pre-season campaign at Dartford on Saturday and emerging from it unscathed is manager Gareth Ainsworth’s main aim.

Ainsworth and the backroom team have been negotiating a host of knocks and niggles through pre-season but the manager’s so far got more players available now than he did when pre-season started.

The Gills boss had seven of his professionals unavailable for their pre-season opener at Dover on July 7 and appears in much better shape ahead of their trip to Ady Pennock’s Dartford this Saturday.

Ainsworth was hoping to have Sam Gale back training ahead of that match, after the young defender has sat out the last three matches, limited to just two 45 minutes of action so far.

The manager has made it clear that summer signing Sam Vokes won’t be fit for the start of the season while winger Aaron Rowe hasn’t made an appearance either.

Josh Andrews took a whack late on against Ebbsfleet but his substitution was pre-planned and the manager wasn’t concerned about the striker’s status post-match.

Jonny Williams missed the opening two games of pre-season but was full of running at Ebbsfleet and lasted 75 minutes, captaining the side on the night too.

Elliott Nevitt and Nelson Khumbeni both got 45 minutes after missing the opening weeks of pre-season action.

Looking ahead to the final pre-season test, Ainsworth said: “I'll be really happy after Dartford. No injuries, plenty of fitness in the boys. Give me next week, any day.

“We're going to have a good go at them but it all counts on August 2nd, that's when it counts.

“Don't worry about anything. I've been in teams that haven't won in pre-season and we were top of the league after seven games.

“I'm not saying that's going to happen but pre-season