Dave Beasant FA Cup penalty save for Wimbledon still haunts me says ex-Mansfield Town star Steve Charles

“I can’t really remember causing a giant-killing act or having a great FA Cup run but I remember Dave Beasant saving my penalty in the year Wimbledon went on to win the cup. It still haunts me to this day,” said the former Wrexham and Sheffield United midfielder whose old clubs clash in this weekend’s fourth round and have invited him as a special guest.

Charles was a Stags player at the time, enjoying his first season at Field Mill after Ian Greaves, who had tried to sign him from The Blades three years earlier, forked out £15,000 to take him from cash-strapped Wrexham.

Twelve months after suffering the pain and embarrassment of being in a Wrexham side beaten 2-1 in a third-round tie at a snow-bound Racecourse by arch rivals Chester City and their two-goal assassin Gary Bennett, Charles was put on the spot again in the fourth round.

“We’d drawn Wimbledon at home - the year they won the cup,” recalled Charles, who scored 38 goals in 250-plus appearances for The Stags.

“We’d gone 2-0 down but clawed a goal back and were on top when we were awarded a penalty.

“I stepped up and put it to my right, his left – and he guessed right. But he was definitely off his line.”

Beasant, whose side were managed by former Wales boss Bobby Gould, told reporters after the game that he’d done his homework on watching the Mansfield players taking penalty when they played Bristol City in the Freight Rover Trophy Final the year before.

“Well, he’d have had a job remembering how I took penalties in that final,” joked Charles. “I was playing for Wrexham at the time!

“I remember watching the FA Cup Final that year and thinking that John Aldridge must have been feeling like I did when Beasant saved his penalty.”

Charles’ only goal in the FA Cup for Wrexham came in a 2-1 win over Hartlepool in 1986 while as the Reds’ regular penalty-taker during his three-year-stay in North Wales, he added: “I don’t think I ever missed a penalty for Wrexham.”