Ben Turner hopes his Mansfield Town career has finally got started

The former Coventry centre half arrived with an injury and had struggled in his one start in his debut at Notts County plus three sub outings before last night.

But he had a fine game at Crawley and said: “It was definitely my best performance so far.

“For the Notts County game I’d only trained a couple of days due to injury problems at the time.

“It was probably a bit early for me, but I wanted to play. Then I got booked early which didn’t help.

“Then I came on the other day in an away performance which wasn’t good enough.

“It was very difficult coming on into that kind of environment when you have just gone 1-0 down due to a bit of a freak goal as they scored while we had a concussion.

“So it was nice to start a game with plenty of training under my belt now and get a clean sheet.

“It feels kind of like the night I have hopefully got my Stags career going, as it were.

“It is a very tight dressing room with some nice individuals and a good balance of young and older players. Hopefully I can add to that.”

The Crawley draw ended a poor run of three away defeats on the bounce.

Turner said: “I think today we improved a lot and the gaffer was happy with the improvements we made. We just lacked that goal that would have got us the three points.

“But we have to emphasise on the positives as we have had a little sticky spell away and it’s important you stop the rot somewhere away from home.

“We’ve now given ourselves a platform to carry on and it’s nice to gain a point on MK Dons.

“We fought and scrapped for each other for 90 minutes.

“It hasn’t quite happened away from home the last two games. So we got back to basics in that respect.

“We earned a clean sheet – the whole team, not just the back four and the goalie – and we created some chances. Unfortunately they didn’t go in.

“There was an element of bad luck as I don’t think the finishes were too bad at all.”

He added: “I think we deserved all three points. Maybe Crawley would disagree but I think we had the clear-cut chances and we were solid.

“They didn’t really have any clear cut chances, just a few longer range efforts and a cross that nearly went in.”

Stags went back into the top three after rivals MK Dons were beaten at Morecambe leaving Mansfield thinking about what might have been.

“We were initially heartened that we’d gained a point, but then you think to yourself if one of those chances had gone in we’d have been back in the driving seat in the automatic spots,” said Turner.

“But gaining promotion is not easy. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. So it’s a point in the right direction.”