Why Chasetown FC should beware the cornered Stags

Chasetown FC’s FA Trophy tie against Mansfield Town has caught the imagination of the Scholars support, with more than 1,000 of them expected to cheer on Charlie Blakemore’s men.

But while the game has huge significance in the history of the home side, the visiting Stags fans will also be keen to move a step closer to Wembley.

Award-winning journalist and Mansfield fan Jon Griffin tells The Lichfield Blog why a win against Chasetown will be so important for this one-time Football League club…

If there’s any club out there which has had more trauma to contend with in recent years than Mansfield Town, then I’d love to hear from their fans, if only to swop sob stories. I do recall a Doncaster Rovers owner burning the club stand down, and the late, unlamented fraudster Robert Maxwell once threatened to merge Oxford with Reading to form a new club called Thames Valley Royals, or Strollers, or whatever the Bouncing Czech’s crazy idea was.

Clubs have fallen in and out of administration Portsmouth-style, emerging under new owners. Leeds “lived the dream” under Peter Ridsdale, and are still manfully battling their way out of what became a nightmare. But they weren’t locked out of their ground…

Just before Christmas Mansfield Town’s landlord, the notorious Keith Haslam ,who bought the club back in 1993, repossessed Field Mill and padlocked the ground. Fortunately, Haslam’s drastic actions, over alleged unpaid rent from present club owner John Radford, coincided with the worst December freeze-up for 100 years, so the Stags were not deducted points for failing to fulfil their home fixtures. A hearing was held at Mansfield County Court last week and Haslam v Radford has been transferred to Birmingham High Court for a full trial, if no settlement can be reached.

Meanwhile, a legal investigation into a dividend payment of over £2 million to Haslam’s Stags Ltd company, enabling the former chairman and chief executive to buy Field Mill in December 2008,separating the club from its biggest asset, is continuing. Mansfield Town’s entire future is effectively in the hands of courts and lawyers.

It wasn’t always like this. I was at Field Mill on the night of February 26, 1969, among a crowd of over 21,000, when the Stags stormed through to the FA Cup quarter-final in a Fifth Round tie against Ron Greenwood’s West Ham United, complete with three World Cup winners in Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters, not to mention the likes of Trevor Brooking and Harry Redknapp. I’m clearly biased, but that was surely football’s greatest-ever giant-killing act. This was no Third Round skirmish, it was a mere three games from Wembley, we were up against a trio from the only England team to win the World Cup – and the game was all over by the 50th minute, by which time the Stags were 3-0 to the good, with goals from Dudley Roberts, Jimmy Goodfelllow and Nick Sharkey. Eat your hearts out, Sutton United, Wrexham, Hereford and the rest – the Stags are the ultimate giant-killers, with World Cup scalps to prove it.

A year later they were up to their old tricks again, storming through to the Fifth Round again, where they were unluckily beaten by Don Revie’s infamous Leeds team. I was also at Elland Road that day as a 14-year-old, and saw the Stags take Revie’s champions to the limit, having a goal from Jimmy Goodfellow unluckily ruled out before succumbing 2-0.

In more recent years they have done themselves proud in FA Cup clashes against Newcastle and Middlesbrough, and remain a club with a long-standing heritage, with over 70 years’ continuous Football League membership before the sad descent into the Blue Square Premier in 2008.

Chasetown fans may dismiss the above as the ramblings of an obsessed fan living in the past. After, all, most clubs have enjoyed their moments in the sun. But the Stags are a special case, their very future threatened by legal issues and High Court possession orders. When owners seek to use clubs of long-standing tradition to enrich themselves, jeopardising the very existence of sporting organisations cherished for decades, something is very wrong.

Chasetown fans should bear that in mind when the Stags take the field on Saturday in the FA Trophy quarter-final. You are playing against a team who once hammered the Hammers and their England World Cup winners, Bobby Moore and all, and are now fighting for their very existence.

A Stag cornered is a very dangerous beast indeed…