Mansfield Town fans’ nostalgia: I will never forget Glenn Hoddle free-kick goal at Field Mill

However it is a drawn game that remains vividly in my memory and also how I came by my first season ticket for that eventful season of 1977/78.

Stags had won promotion to the then second tier of English football.

In the close season there was a competition in the Sun newspaper to write (in 500 words or less) about the best player you had ever seen with the prize being two season tickets for the club of your choice.

I entered, wrote about the fabulous John Charles, and won my choice of club, yes, I chose my club, the Stags.

Some well established Premier League clubs were in Division Two then but none were bigger that Tottenham Hotspur who had dropped into the league that season for their first time.

The game at Field Mill was played in March on a pitch which looked like a `paddy field`.

As players went down (sliding tackles were a feature of football then) shirts were covered in mud with shirt numbers completely obliterated.

Passing along the ground became a farce as the game went on, but it was the conditions that added to the drama.

In today’s terms the match would not have gone ahead.

Tottenham had in Glenn Hoddle one of the best English players around together with a sprinkling of other International players.

None of the Stags players would have been known to them at the start, but they respected them after 90 minutes.

The game ended 3-3, Dave Syretts third only just managed to cross the line because of the state of the pitch,

Glen Hoddle scored their third with one minute to go with a spectacular free kick. Stags had missed a penalty earlier in the game.

We were relegated despite in the last nine games of the season having won four and drawn three.

I still have a season ticket together with my two grandsons.