Mansfield Town's history vs Luton Town including double red card Cup drama
Mansfield Town will welcome promotion-chasing Luton Town to the One Call Stadium this weekend as the first of their final five opponents in this 2025/26 League One season.
Stags will be hoping to do the double over Jack Wilshere’s side on Saturday, having beat them 2-0 back in October at Kenilworth Road. Goals from Rhys Oates and Tyler Roberts secured the away win, breaking a lengthy run without a victory against the Hatters.
Mansfield Town have faced Luton on 25 occasions in league football throughout their histories – which is significantly fewer than their meetings with the likes of latest opponents Leyton Orient, who Stags played for the 62nd time at league level on Tuesday.
Prior to their win earlier this season, the last time Stags and Hatters met was back in 2018 in League Two, which ended in a 2-1 defeat for Mansfield. Since then, Luton have worked their way up to the Premier League and faced a tough double relegation, which saw back-to-back drops to the Championship and League One in the 2023/24 and 2024/25 seasons.
Wilshere’s side are in with a chance of claiming the last promotion play-off spot this season but they need as many points as possible from their remaining four games. They are also relying on sixth-placed Stevenage to slip up, as just three points currently separate the two in this final stretch.
Mansfield Town vs Luton Town H2H history
In the 25 times these two clubs have met at league level, Stags have the slight edge with 10 wins on the board compared to Luton’s seven. The other eight games finished as draws.
Mansfield have won just one of their last seven meetings with Luton Town. Their most recent victory prior to this season came in League Two in 2015. A first half goal courtesy of Rakish Bingham was enough to claim the victory at the One Call Stadium.
Stags supporters will also remember the dramatic clash between Mansfield and Luton in the FA Trophy back in 2011 – a campaign that saw the club book their ticket to Wembley for the first time in 24 years. After taking a 1-0 lead from the first leg to Kenilworth Road, Mansfield had to fight into extra time to win the match, as Hatters struck through Lloyd Owusu to get themselves back into it and level the aggregate score.
On the cusp of regular full-time, Luton imploded as two of their players were sent off in the space of five minutes. Claude Gnapka was shown a second yellow in the 84th minute to reduce Hatters to ten, and Alex Lawless shortly followed him off the pitch minutes later. A brutal elbow to Kyle Nix’s head knocked the Mansfield man unconscious, resulting in Lawless’ immediate marching orders.
The 90 minutes ended 1-0 to Luton and 1-1 on aggregate, forcing the extra period. Stags grabbed the opportunity with both hands and Louis Briscoe nabbed the winner in the 118th minute to send his side to Wembley. Mansfield Town went on to lose 1-0 to Darlington in the final, after another bout of extra time ended in the County Durham club scoring a 120th minute winner to shatter Stags’ hearts.