AS referee Andre Marriner did to Liverpool, you’ve got to hand it to Mansfield’s players, manager and fans; last Sunday they were everything the FA Cup should be about.
From Alan Marriott in goal, through Exodus Geohaghon, Lee Beevers, Johns Thompson and Dempster at the back, Adam Murray, Anthony Howell, Louis Briscoe, Lindon Meikle and the ever-improving Chris Clements in midfield, and the irrepressible Matt Green up front.
They might not have hurled a giant out like a Big Ex throw-in, as their Blue Square Bet Premier rivals Luton and Macclesfield did the previous day with Championship clubs Wolves and Cardiff.
But those Stags lads – plus subs Colin Daniel and Matt Rhead – showed exactly why the Cup is still the greatest knockout competition in the world, and why suggestions to shake it up by making the Premier and Championship
sides enter in the first round, playing away for the first three, should be implemented.
It would be fantastic if they started in August with the qualifying rounds, when Maine Road could host Manchester City and Newcastle Town welcome Newcastle United south. But that is never going to happen.
Mansfield more than matched the Premier League side and had the likes of Jamie Carragher defending for their lives in the second half. If ever a shot in the arm was needed to re-energise the Cup, last week provided it.
Off the field, the build-up was magnificent. It was a lovely touch to keep 96 seats in the away end empty, bar the name of each Liverpool fan who lost their life at Hillsborough. As was the playing of The Justice Collective’s ‘He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother’ in tribute to those victims.
Wonder
Then the tannoy man announced that the two clubs’ anthems would be played to get the 7,574 crowd in the mood.
You’ll Never Walk Alone followed by Elvis Presley’s ‘Wonder of You’, with the home fans growing louder with every “wowooaah”.
Of course, after an end-to-end Cup classic, we were left with the ‘Cheat’ headlines that emerged after Luis Suarez clearly handled on his way to scoring Liverpool’s decisive second goal, just as the Stags were rutting the Reds.
Many mad Mansfield words were uttered in the immediate aftermath, but Cox spoke for everyone who understands
football when he said: “It’s down to the officials to spot it.
“If the boot had been on the other foot, I would have accepted it. Suarez did what any other striker would have done. I can’t be two-faced on that.”
Many criticised the brilliant Uruguayan (and he is, let me add, it was a privilege to see him live) for celebrating by kissing the offending wrist, neglecting the fact he plants a smacker on a tattoo of his daughter’s name whatever the quality of goal he’s scored, or the opposition.
The way he slashed the ball into the empty net showed that he believed the goal would be disallowed, and Marriott – the aggrieved man nearest the ball, and who this week changed his twitter profile picture to one of the incident – also spoke plenty of sense.
“It’s football,” said the ex-Lincoln stopper, who had produced three brilliant saves to keep out Liverpool’s other goalscorer, £12m striker Daniel Sturridge, in the first half.
Instinctive
“I know people have called him a cheat in the past, but every man from the Sunday League to Premier League would do it if they can get away with it.”
Cox described Suarez’s action as “instinctive”, as the ball bounced up towards his hand.
For me, instinctive and deliberate are the same. Just down the A60 from Field Mill, I remember playing for Arnold Town at home to Sheffield FC.
A cross was swung in from the right, and knowing the striker was lurking behind me, my arm came up as I stretched to jump and tipped it away from his head.
The score was 0-0, the ref didn’t spot it and we went onto win 5-0. A decade later, I did the same thing playing for Ware at Ilford.
This time the ref saw it, gave a penalty and they scored. I got myself out of jail by heading in an injury-time equaliser, but to this day I can’t explain how it happened. It was a natural, instinctive reaction in a desperate situation, but clearly
deliberate.
Did I cheat? Yes, because I had broken the laws of the game. It must have happened dozens of times in other parts of the pitch, but I don’t remember them because football is fundamentally about what goes on in both boxes.
What happened last Sunday was a £600,000 shame, granted, because a replay was the least the Stags deserved.
But Mansfield v Liverpool at a sold-out Field Mill ticked every Cup box for me, missed handballs or not.
It clearly did for ESPN too, the record 1.5m peak viewing figures higher than for a Saturday teatime Premier League match.
So, FA, let’s have more of the same of what we saw there, at Kenilworth Road and Moss Rose. At the time of next October’s first round draw, get every Premier League and Championship side involved, put their balls in a bag marked ‘away’ and hand them trips to lower level opposition to shake the Cup up a bit.
Beaten Bayls At His Best
HIS rock-bottom team – all 13 of them who were available due to a registration embargo – were so poor at Luton in midweek, but Barrow boss Dave Bayliss retained his sense of humour.
Having previously said he wouldn’t want a relegation on his CV, the Holker Street manager was asked by the BBC
Radio Cumbria reporter whether he’d consider his position if the gap to Blue Square Bet Premier safety widened?
“Well, if you had a pair of boobs you’d be my auntie or my mum, so it’s one of them, isn’t it? Ifs and buts,” replied the
former Hatters defender, raising a tit-ter or two in the Kenilworth Road Press box!
