LOMAS ON STAGS: Early Mansfield Town injury list proves luck does not even out in football

Staff must be nervously looking into the stands for a sniper as player after player goes down for the third season in a row.

To lose four key players at Doncaster Rovers last week – all to serious injuries with one long term – and then to lose two more at Crewe on Saturday is a huge blow to Nigel Clough’s plans and took his early season treatment room queue to double figures.

People insist luck in football evens out over a season.

But that is a blatant lie.

Mansfield Town’s luck on injuries has not evened out for the past two seasons – and has probably cost them promotion both times. Now it already threatens to derail the early head of steam the Stags were working up this year.

Alfie Kilgour was looking every inch the defender warrior the club had needed for a long time – a new George Foster.

Now he is out for up to a year with a ruptured Achilles tendon.

Were Stags to play today Clough would be unable to call on 12 of his best players to start or complete 90 minutes.

And already he is being forced to put square pegs in round holes, though those players are doing a sterling job at fitting in.

No amount of assessment and research into why these injuries are happening will explain it or offer any consistency.

They are random moments of cruelty in what we all know can be a very cruel game.

The good thing though is the team have continued to entertain and remain unbeaten ahead of the weekend.

And missing players offers others the chance to make the shirt their own.

Don’t forget how much everyone wanted John-Joe O’Toole to stay when he looked set to go elsewhere and he has had an injury nightmare since. But he could still be called upon as bodies tumble.

It all underlines what good business it was when Stags surprised everyone and signed man-mountain Aden Flint out of the blue. Whoever comes in, the defence will be built on and around him and his Championship experience now and not the unlucky Kilgour.