Mansfield Town 0-2 Gateshead

Saturday 6th February 2010 -- Blue Square Premier

What can you say about this game - a game that was watched by a crowd of over 7200? Stags were hopeless, Gateshead defended superbly but how many of the "floating" fans will be at the next "pay as much as you want" game?

New Stags skipper Luke Foster had a nightmare at centre-half, while Gateshead centre-half James Curtis had a blinder. Special mention to visiting keeper Paul Farman -- the 20 year old made three cracking saves late in the game to keep the Stags out......the home teams performance and result meant that the only ones in the huge crowd that were smiling after 90 minutes were the 70 odd from Gateshead...

Report from Mansfield Town official site

We left for the ground earlier that usual, expecting to have a struggle parking - but Kev had no problem and we were in Field Mill at 2:35pm. Kev fancied a pie, but the queue, even at that time was huge, so we took our seats.

Now, on a normal matchday at the Mill, we arrive as the players are kicking in.... this is the practice of hammering the ball as hard as possible into the Quarry Lane goal. With the Stags though, most of the balls fly into the Quarry Lane stand .. hitting people at random. You would have thought that with the stand rammed to the gills, that this "exercise" would have been abandoned - but no...... still the players smashed the ball into the crowd and sad to say, a little lad in front of us was hit quite hard - and I just wish the players could have seen the little lad crying in pain .. maybe they would have ceased .... crazy, crazy, crazy.

Mum and her lads in the firing line...

While this was happening, the "Crowd Safety Officers" were cramming more and more people in the limited number of seats that were still available - totally oblivious to crowd safety....and the balls were still raining in on the spectators - no-one bothered to ask the lad how he was.....

Eventually the Quarry Lane situation became so ridiculous that people were lead to the North Stand, although some were actually asked to stand near the scoreboard. These were all relocated eventually, but what a right old mess......

Apparently 600 people were turned away, as the capacity of Field Mill is around 7300 and this figure was rapidly approaching - the kick off was delayed for 20 minutes as the crowd problems were sorted, but there were still people entering the QLE at 3:30pm !!

No problems getting out of the ground at full time -- half the crowd had left well before then, and who could blame them?

Admission season ticket

Attendance 7261 (74)

Weather .. .misty and bloody cold!

Tuesday -- Hucknall Tn v Worksop Tn