football rambles

Yesterday I got to a game for the first time in over a month and like the last game I went to the away team won 5-1. Volunteers had helped clear the pitch of snow at the Abbey. They probably wished they hadn't bothered. Due to having to make changes Cambridge manager Martin Ling decided to change the formation to 3-4-3, which might have worked if the forwards weren't firing blanks, although it was always going to leave the team exposed at the back. The match didn't start off too badly for Cambridge and both Wayne Gray and Danny Wright had chances that they squandered. However, in this period Cambridge were a bit guilty of trying to walk the ball into the net and Mansfield looked dangerous on the break. They showed just how dangerous they could be when on 33 minutes Adam Murray (not to be mixed up with his namesake at Ely City) blasted the ball into the back of the onion bag. Just 4 minutes later Adam Smith doubled the visitors lead with a wicked strike that on December 28th...

Mansfield Town like a lot of British clubs in the nineteenth century came into being due to local God botherers wanting the local folk to keep away from the demon drink by embracing sport. From these values Mansfield Town were born as Mansfield Wesleyans in 1897. They later shortened the name to Mansfield Wesley in 1906, by the way. They finally became Mansfield Town in 1910 in a move that didn't go down well with their more successful local rivals of the time, Mansfield Mechanics. To celebrate their change of name Mansfield left the Mansfield & District Alliance behind and joined the Central Alliance League. They also found a new ground called 'The Prairie', which had all the facilities you'd expect to find on a prairie (i.e. none) and the surface would have more aptly been called 'The Quagmire'. War was around the corner and like many clubs Mansfield packed in for the duration. However, after the war in 1919 Mansfield Mechanics, who were having money probl...