Archived News from June 2021
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REVIEW OF THE SEASON + iFOLLOW FIGURES
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by Martin Shaw
For The Stag, end of season magazine It’s been a season like no other. A whole season played out in front of no spectators, with the exception of two away games at Cambridge and Carlisle in December. I know how privileged a position I have been in, going to every match as club commentator for iFollow Stags. I’ve done my best to convey what’s happened at the grounds to the listeners and viewers at home. I first started commentating on the Stags in 2003 for Mansfield 103.2 and then for the club. I think I’ve commentated on just about every home match in the past 15 years for the club. A and on every away match since 2008 for BBC Radio Nottingham and then for the club, apart from the first three seasons back in the Football League. But it’s been a very different experience this season. It took some getting used to, commentating with no fans in the ground. I can best describe the atmosphere as sterile. Normally as commentator I can feed off the fans and relay the atmosphere. But there was nothing to relay. Of course it wasn’t helped by getting off to such a bad start to the season. The Stags failed to win in the opening 12 league and cup games, culminating in a 4-2 defeat at home to Barrow, a side that had also failed to win any of its opening games. The scoreline could even have been more humiliating. Barrow were good, but the Stags made them look like Barcelona. It looked like the Stags were heading for a relegation struggle. I remember feeling so low at the end of the game on commentary and saying something like “things had to change”. Dean and I could envisage fans screaming at their laptops and TVs at home. Things did change. An hour after the game, manager Graham Coughlan was sacked. Academy manager Richard Cooper stepped in as caretaker and steadied the ship making one or two tweaks on and off the field. A couple of draws followed including narrowly failing to find the first win of the season, away at Bolton Wanderers, only denied by a late equaliser. Then came the news that Nigel Clough had been appointed as the new manager. What a fantastic appointment and a tremendous coup for the club, especially in difficult times with a lack of funds coming in due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Huge thanks were due to owners John and Carolyn Radford for financing the appointment and financing the club in general. Being able to attract Nigel Clough to the club came as a massive lift to me, and I think to virtually every Stags fan everywhere. Twenty four hours later, the Stags were playing away at Sunderland in the FA Cup. The first visit for the club to the magnificent Stadium of Light and it was heartbreaking for Stags fans not to be able to attend. The atmosphere would have been amazing. The Stags put on a fantastic performance and won 1-0. We commentated from the back of the stand, so high up that binoculars would have been useful. It was bittersweet to win at the Stadium with no atmosphere though. It was the first win of the season in any competition at the fifteenth attempt! A win in the EFL Trophy at Scunthorpe immediately followed as Nigel Clough was in the dugout for the first time, and then the precious first win in the League as the Stags won at high-flying Forest Green Rovers. What a relief! I remember exploding with joy at the full time whistle. The Stags were still in the bottom four but the side already looked transformed. A run of five successive wins from the end of December into January finally propelled the Stags 11 points away from the dreaded relegation zone. A frustrating run of five postponements in six games blunted Mansfield’s momentum. Only two of the next 17 games were won, and as a result, the threat of relegation lingered, though the gap to the bottom two never got closer than 8 points. Finally wins over Stevenage and Scunthorpe in April extinguished any possibility of relegation. It came as a relief, and full credit to manager Nigel Clough. Under his management, Mansfield won more league games than they lost which was at least mid-table form. Stags fans could now look forward to next season with more positivity, especially in the hope that they will be back in the stands and not being forced to watch from home! As I look back on the season perhaps the craziest moment in the commentary box came away at Morecambe in October. Strict Covid-19 protocols have been applied at every match. All the media have to wear a mask at all times apart from when actually broadcasting, and there were temperature checks on entry to every ground, hand sanitisation, and so on. At Morecambe, we took our masks off and started our broadcast ten minutes before kick-off as usual and immediately I got a tap on the shoulder. I did my best to ignore it as I introduced our coverage. I handed over to Dean to say something and noticed he had put his mask back on. A steward was still immediately behind me and insisted I put my mask back on. I said I wouldn’t be able to see as my glasses would steam up, he said you have to. So reluctantly I did and spent the next 90 minutes adjusting my mask, and constantly wiping my glasses! We didn’t mention it in commentary to try to keep things professional but it certainly made the job a lot harder. We discovered afterwards that Morecambe had also made other clubs do this, but they dropped the requirement a few games later after the EFL stepped in. It’s been a season like no other. Let’s hope 2021/22 is a much better one for the Stags and for the fans. -------------------- Top scorer: Bowery 10, Lapslie 9, Reid 7, Charsley, McLaughlin 5, Maynard, Sweeney 4, O.Clarke, Cook, Perch, Sinclair 3, Menayese, Quinn 2, Law, Maris 1. 2 OG ----------------- Below are iFollow viewing figures (Stags sales only including season ticket holders) 
Note that it's not possible from the info available to calculate a reasonable estimate of the money the club made from iFollow sales. The sales for home games (excluding season ticket holders) up to the end of November were announced here: https://stagsnet.net/news/newsdetails.php?newsid=9964 They were not announced after that point. You would also need to know the number of sales by the opposition for each home game in order to calculate the overall figure. Martin ------------------- |
Latest | June 2021