Gillingham manager Neil Harris was pleased to see his side show a more ruthless side on Saturday.

It wasn’t perfect - Harris watched his side score five and felt they could have had more - but with chances being created at will there was a lot more on offer from the Gills going forward.

Report: Dartford 0 Gillingham 5

Having worked on sharpening up in the days before the game, Harris said: “Running wise we have been absolutely fine in games, the lads have been excellent in pre-season training, covered a lot of distance, straight line running, training-wise, but short sharp stuff we looked slightly behind Millwall, certainly, a Championship side.

“Against Charlton we lacked a bit in both boxes and in the last couple of days we have worked on attack versus defence, sharpening up, defensively and attacking-wise, in the last 22 yards of the pitch.

“We blocked a lot defensively and they asked a lot of questions of us. Physically we had to stand up to it.

“In the final third, I thought we were excellent, we scored five, we could and should have had eight or nine.

“It was a great opportunity for us to practice with the ball and I was really pleased with us, with where we are after four weeks of pre-season.

“This was a really good test for us in a different way.

“We played Dover and dominated the ball, we weren’t sharp at all, won comfortably. Como was a really good fixture against a side who play in a league a lot higher than ours but maybe they were quite a way behind us physically and that was quite an even game.

“The Millwall and Charlton games I thought we played really well for 45-60 minutes but not over the 90, coming out the wrong end of the results in both the games against teams higher up the pyramid. But on Saturday it was more like where we should be after playing pre-season, physically we looked a lot sharper than Dartford, we made a lot of good decisions.

“My only gripe with the players is that managing the game has to be better. We gave a physical team way too many opportunities to put the ball in our box and ask questions. If we do that against a League 2 opponent then we will come unstuck and that’s the learning curve from the day, for us moving forward, it is just managing the game better as a group.”