CATLING'S CORNER STAGS BLOG: Mansfield Town lose out in beach football

On Saturday the Stags headed to Wales to face Newport County in what can be only described as a beach football match which was played on sand.
Mansfield Town's  - Pic Chris Holloway - The Bigger PictureMansfield Town's  - Pic Chris Holloway - The Bigger Picture
Mansfield Town's - Pic Chris Holloway - The Bigger Picture

It was one of the worst pitches I have seen and I have no idea how they got the go-ahead to let the game happen.

Trust me guys my mood doesn’t get much better through this blog today. Once more, as has been said in most weeks I have done my blog, I’m sat here again mentioning shocking refereeing and officiating.

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The linesman got a clear offside wrong from which their goal was scored.

Click HERE to read the match report

Click HERE to read Craig Priest’s Stags blog

Us Stags fans were sat straight in line with where it happened and he was a good five yards offside.

It says something when you walk out the ground and a few of the stewards are saying to you – a definite offside, we feel sorry for the Stags and the fans.

That wasn’t just from one of the stewards it was from a fair few.

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A referee once again buckled to home crowd pressure. Why can we not have a home banker ref who helps us?

To be fair it wasn’t a great performance at all, but at the very least we did deserve a point as both teams cancelled each other out throughout the game.

For me the better players for us at Newport were Ryan Tafazolli, Lee Collins, Matty Blair and Jamie McGuire.

These four players didn’t do themselves any harm with what they did.

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I must say I would like to see the disallowed Tafazolli goal again as at the time I didn’t think there looked anything wrong with it in my opinion.

We now have to win this weekend against Yeovil.

If not, for me, it might see the realisation start to set in that we might not quite have the quality needed to get into the play-offs, but I do hope I’m wrong.

Fair do’s, it is only a defeat and there is still a long way to go. But teams like Newport do need to be putting away.

Just to finish off I’d like to welcome back Colin/Junior Daniel - get that sweet left foot banging them goals in Junior!

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So this coming weekend my three wishes are - a good ref who is fair to both teams, a good performance from the Stags on a pitch with proper grass on it, and to take the game to the opposition, go 4-4-2 and see what happens.

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