Kent sports review of 2022: Gillingham go down, Maidstone United go up, Zak Crawley and Giarnni Regini-Moran make history... and Alessia Russo ensures that football does come home

What a year! Everywhere you looked in 2022 sporting drama was easy to find. Whether on the international stage at the Winter Paralympics, the Women's Euros or the Commonwealth Games, or at Priestfield Stadium, St Lawrence or Brands Hatch, hopes were realised and dreams were dashed during an amazing 12 months...

January

One of the topics among the small talk around the dinner table for Gillingham fans on Christmas Day would surely have been the future of manager Steve Evans.

Supporters didn’t have to wait long to find out - nine days into the new year, to be precise - with Evans departing by mutual consent after a 4-0 defeat at home to Ipswich left them seven points adrift of safety.

The loss was Gillingham’s sixth in seven League 1 games, with Evans’ final victory as boss coming in October, so the Scot’s departure after two-and-a-half years in charge, along with assistant Paul Raynor, was hardly a surprise.

“I’m not one to offer excuses,” he said. “At the end of the day, I wasn’t happy, the chairman (Paul Scally) wasn’t happy, we’ve been speaking for the last couple of weeks.

“One thing I am, I’m honest. Sometimes my opinion’s misguided but I said to him we need to sit down and he called me Sunday and said let’s have that chat, and it was very amicable.

“We’ll see but it was very amicable in terms of it’s not working, he needs to change direction. When you’ve not won for that long, it’s right.”

Club legend and former manager Steve Lovell took temporary charge with the likes of Neil Smith, Michael Flynn, Luke Garrard and even Steve Bruce touted as possible replacements.

In the end it was another former Gills player, striker Neil Harris, who got the call from Mr Scally and his appointment on a two-and-a-half-year deal