Gillingham Football Club is an English association football club originally formed in 1893 under the name New Brompton F.C. The club adopted its present name in 1912, and played in the Southern League until 1920, when that league's top division was absorbed into the Football League as its new Division Three. The "Gills" were voted out of the league in favour of Ipswich Town at the end of the 1937–38 season, but returned 12 years later, when that league was expanded from 88 to 92 clubs.
Twice in the late 1980s Gillingham came close to winning promotion to the second tier of English football, but a decline then set in and in 1993 the club narrowly avoided relegation to the Football Conference. In 2000, Gillingham reached the second tier of the English league for the first time in the club's history. They went on to spend five seasons at this level, achieving a club record highest league finish of eleventh place in the 2002–03 season before being relegated twice to return to the league's bottom division, known since 2004 as Football League Two. The club has won honours at a professional level namely the Football League Fourth Division championship in the 1963–64 season as well as the Football League Two championship in the 2012–13 season.