The mix-up arose on Friday afternoon when the club wanted to extend selling tickets to Saturday morning - and announced they would be open from 10am.

A couple of hours later that was changed, with the deadline for selling tickets reverting back to 5pm on Friday with the club saying they expected to sell all of their allocation.

A few fans who heard only the first announcement from the club then went to Field Mill on Saturday wanting to buy tickets, but had to be turned away.

A spokesman for the Stags told Chad: "We apologise to those fans who did not hear the second announcement and so still came to the ground on Saturday to try to buy tickets. We had wanted to sell tickets, but then found out we could not."

The match had been made all-ticket after the county council's Safety Advisory Group placed a 50% capacity restriction following problems at the Chesterfield match and with rogue turnstiles at Field Mill.

A spokesman for Nottinghamshire County Council said: "Mansfield Town did ask us on Friday afternoon if they could continue to sell tickets on Saturday.

"However, where the police have indicated that a game is all-ticket, the rules of the safety certificate clearly say that clubs cannot sell tickets on the day of the game.

"If they had sold tickets on the Saturday, the club would have been in breach of its safety certificate. This is standard police advice across the country."

The match attracted a crowd of 4,004, around 1,000 short of the revised capacity, with incoming chairman James Derry saying the restrictions had cost the club around £20,000-£30,000 in lost revenue.

"If the match had not been all-ticket I firmly believe we could have had a crowd of 6,000 - as there was last year," he told Chad.

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