MIDWAY through the first half of Mansfield Town’s FA Cup second round ‘winner-takes-all’ replay with Lincoln City, the tannoy operator asked for the owner of a Peugeot 307 to return to their car.
“You’ve left your window open,” he announced, as the 5,304-strong crowd chanted “You don’t know what you’re doing!”
Normally when open windows are talked of at Field Mill, owner John Radford‘s chequebook comes out. Or do clubs use PayPal these days?
The manager in the away dugout on Wednesday, David Holdsworth, was known as the ‘Tinkerman’ for the 65 signings he made in his 23-month reign at Mansfield, including nine in 55 days under Radford’s ownership.
Current manager Paul Cox, meanwhile, admits he got carried away by making 14 after losing in last term’s Blue Square Bet Premier play-off semi-final to York, the size of his squad unmanageable in the divergent early days of this campaign.
Not on this night though, when the only transfer likely to take place was £27,000 winging its way from the FA’s bank account to the winning club’s.
This window of opportunity was not only for any passing polar bears to swap the freezing north Nottinghamshire air for the relative warmth of a five-door estate, but for a Non-League club to book a home tie with five times European Cup winners Liverpool.
The once-mighty, still-box office Reds had already guaranteed the winners a further £135,000 windfall, with the third round tie already booked for live screening by ESPN – the broadcasters of this replay – whether at Field Mill or Sincil Bank.
It is a wise choice, unlike their viewers’ pick of Louis Briscoe as Budweiser man-of-the-match. Yes, the winger scored the late winner, but by his own admission, Briscoe “had only two touches in both games” – though he did score with both.
The same goes for Mansfield’s match sponsors’ pick of Matt Green. His night’s work was impressive, but star man for me had to be captain John Dempster, a colossus at the back for Stags as he has been for the last six years in Non-League’s top-flight with Oxford, Kettering, Crawley and, earlier this season when he was strangely sent out on loan, Tamworth.
Magnetised
Mansfield’s early opener might have gone down as a Paul Farman own goal, but it was Dempster’s looping header that rebounded back off the post to hit the helpless goalkeeper.
The 29-year-old had five headers at goal, every set-piece seemingly magnetised to his forehead. “It’s big enough,” he joked afterwards, in a lighter moment after dedicating the opener to one of his best friends, the former Corby Town right-back Andrew Brown, who died a fortnight ago at the age of 32.
As a schoolboy Liverpool fan, Dempster has his own reasons for relishing Luis Suarez, Raheem Sterling and Steven Gerrard’s impending visit.
His dad, Iain, hails from the same Scottish mining area as Bill Shankly and cherishes a letter sent to him as a little lad by the late Anfield legend.
And Dempster would love an Anfield replay so he can relive the night he went to Merseyside to watch the famous Stan Collymore-inspired 4-3 win over Newcastle in 1996.
“The trip was my 13th birthday present,” he smiled, shivering on the fringe of the Field Mill pitch where moments earlier, thousands of yellow and blue-clad home fans had cheered their heroes off with famous Wembley song ‘Que Sera Sera’ warming the icy atmosphere.
It’s all a bit different to some home games this season, where Cox’s under-achieving title tips had been booed off as the new-look squad struggled to gel.
Credit the manager. He realised his mistake in not moving quickly enough to secure centre-backs Exodus Geohaghon and Martin Riley from last season’s powerful, impervious play-off side.
Promotion
It cost a few quid to get the former back from Kidderminster in August, but with Riley by then a pivotal part of another promotion push at Wrexham, he did the next best thing and recalled Dempster from his month in exile at the Lamb to play alongside Big Ex.
I say next best thing, but don’t forget it was Dempster’s three-month loan from Crawley this time last year that helped get Stags’ 2011-12 season going.
With Dempster back as the foundation of the team – and he had to be strong on Wednesday as Lincoln, like Burscough in the 2005-06 ‘Million-pound Man United match’ at Burton, threw everything at Mansfield – they’ve lost just once in 11 games in which he’s featured.
A Red-letter Cup day awaits in the New Year, but the rest of the Blue Square Bet Premier should be warned that Mansfield, just four points off the top five, know that despite their poor start, a promotion window is open, too.
And with Cox’s second-half-of-the-season records at Eastwood (one loss in the last 26 games) and Mansfield (two in 22) in the past two years, I fancy them to climb right through.
