Mansfield Town shake off the rust in Lincoln City friendly ahead of hectic festive period

Stags saw their game at home to Grimsby Town called off last weekend due to the frozen pitch.

The Lincoln game was originally only going to involve the subs and fringe players but after losing Saturday's game, manager Nigel Clough said all squad members would play today.

“We were going to just use for the players who needed a game. But we are now going to extend it, use it as a good training session and everybody will play at least 45 minutes,” he said.

“Then we will be off Thursday and in Friday and Saturday in preparation for Boxing Day.

“The biggest challenge is always keeping people fit who are not playing. So we will organise another game in early January for those who don't play over the Christmas period.

“Jimmy Knowles will play 45 minutes at Lincoln and then we will see how he is from there. This is literally his first time back on the pitch in a competitive game after injury.

“We are extending his contract to the end of the season to give him every opportunity to get fit.”

Clough said it was illness rather than injury that was affecting the camp at the moment.

“We are not too bad on injuries. The biggest challenge we have at the moment is illness with so many bugs going around which have laid down a few players,” he said.

“It is coming from the children unfortunately. They are passing it on to their parents and we have had five or six in the past week go down with it and it's been pretty serious, not just a 24 hour bug. It's lasting a few days and some are really feeling the effects. it in their recovery on the training pitch.

“Jordan Bowery has had it, James Perch, Oli Hawkins, George Lapslie have all had it – just about all of them with young families – it's inevitable when things go round. It just gets passed on.”

On losing last weekend's game, he added: “We changed our training session on Friday as we usually only have a light session but heard the game was off, despite everyone's best efforts. “We had the pitch covered for days, as did everyone in the league, but I think only two games survived which shows the severity of the temperatures.

“It's not just the odd day it's when it's three or four nights at minus six or minus seven. The covers can't protect against that.

“So we had a really good session on the Friday then the lads had a rare weekend off.”