Mansfield Town pitch gets some TLC ahead of the next campaign

Blackburn Rovers arrive for the first home pre-season friendly in seven weeks' time and Merriman is working hard to create a pitch that, as with last season's, will attract plenty of praise from visiting sides.

He said: "The feedback was very good on the pitch last season - it was very good despite the winter months having taken their toll a bit.

"We had a bit of trouble under the West Stand but we’re looking to eradicate that this year. But as a whole, it feedback was fantastic.

“We’ve taken the top off the pitch now as it plains the vegetation out, but we haven’t gone deep so it doesn’t take the fibre out.

“We’ll put 20 bags of seed on it and off we go again. We had all the major work done two years ago with the drainage system.

“We’ve had the fibre sand tested and the levels are still good, so we don’t need to add any this year. We’ll look again at the end of the season and see what’s what.

“Hopefully be up and running and ready to go in time for the first game.”

Merriman says new manager John Dempster is keen to keep the pitch the same size as last season.

He added: "John has commented on how good the pitch was last year so hopefully we can go one better this year.

“It’s a lot better already because we had it turned over last year. We’ll have an even flatter surface this year.”

Work is also ongoing at the Stags' RH Academy with the intention of pitches being available after the first team's trip to Portugal in July.

Merriman added: "We've had drainage work done on pitch two and stripped and seeded it. Pitch one has had some plastic drains put in, as has pitch three.

“The training pitch at One Call Stadium is a fallback now in case anything goes wrong at RH Academy as it’s a good pitch that drains really well.”