semi-final against Bury, replacing David Worrall and Omer Riza with Chris Humphrey and Nick Chadwick; both Worrall and Riza dropped to the substitutes' bench. Steve Leslie was not available for selection as he was serving a suspension after being sent off against Bury and both Mike Jackson and David Hibbert had failed to recover from injuries sustained earlier in the season. Prior to the match, Jackson was Gillingham's top goalscorer with 20 goals; Shrewsbury's Grant Holt was the season's leading scorer among all League Two players with 28 goals: 20 in the league, 1 in the Football League Cup, and 7 in the Football League Trophy. Match First half After the players were presented to the guests of honour, Shrewsbury kicked off the match at 3:00pm. After less than a minute, Gillingham defender Barry Fuller was forced to hack the ball clear of his penalty area after confusion among his teammates. Gillingham were awarded three free kicks in the first five minutes; the third of these was played to Barcham in a position close to the Shrewsbury goal, but his header made only glancing contact with the ball and it went wide of the goal. Moments later, Fuller challenged Shrewsbury's Ben Davies for the ball in the Gillingham penalty area and appeared to catch him on the upper body with his boot, but the referee did not penalise him for it. Early on, both teams concentrated their attacking play on the left-hand side of the pitch from their respective points of view, with Barcham and Davies featuring prominently in those areas. In the 12th minute, Davies attempted to run past Fuller, who was forced the kick the ball out of play, resulting in a throw-in for Shrewsbury. The ball was quickly played out again for a second throw-in to the same team. Ashton threw the ball in to Holt, who passed it back to him, but Ashton's subsequent long ball into the penalty area evaded all his team-mates and went out for a goal kick to Gillingham. Shortly afterwards, Gillingham defender Nutter made a long run into an attacking position but his shot rebounded off the back of Shrewsbury's Graham Coughlan. Holt was again involved in an attack on the 15-minute mark but Gillingham's Garry Richards pressured him into kicking the ball out of play. As the opening quarter of an hour ended, Gillingham began to dominate play, repeatedly sending