Tuesday night was definitely not a happy one for most Gasheads. Perhaps the only consolation was that pay-on-the-day supporters only had to fork out a fiver to stand and watch Mansfield walk all over us. By half-time, the Stags had scored three, had one disallowed for offside and seen Lee Hodges head another off the line as Rovers struggled to cope with their blistering pace and superior movement. In the aftermath of the defeat, many onlookers agreed that we had not been playing particularly well at home this season and had relied on opportunism to grind out our points - maybe this result had been coming once somebody found us out. It was no surprise to see Mansfield so prolific in front of goal; they scored 66 times in their relegation season last year, which was remarkably just a couple less than runaway champions Wigan (68 goals) and play-off finalists Cardiff (68) and QPR (69). They have followed that up this season by putting five past both Scunthorpe and Bury, as well as notching up three-goal hauls away at Southend and now Rovers. But after being caught cold and going 2-0 down inside 13 minutes in midweek, could we have done anything to stem the yellow tide? Well, we found ourselves in a similar predicament just over a month ago when Macclesfield raced into a two-goal lead in the opening quarter of an hour, and Ray Graydon immediately changed the game by hauling off Wayne Carlisle. His decision paid off that time as the reshuffled Rovers fought back to 2-2 by half-time and we saved a point from what looked a perilous situation early on. So why didn't he change things again? On Tuesday it was clear that the eleven that had kicked off were not pulling their weight, yet Graydon let the team bumble on until beyond the interval, by which time Mansfield had added a conclusive third, thanks to a wicked deflection off Danny Boxall that looped over Kevin Miller at close range. Graydon finally shook his side up in the 66th minute when he brought on Simon Bryant, but by then it was obviously too late to rescue anything from the game. In fact Bryant did quite well in his 25-minute stint, and maybe if he had been brought on earlier he could have had more of an effect on the scoreline. Then there was Lewis Haldane on the bench, the man who won a penalty within seconds of coming on for his debut against Cheltenham at the weekend. Why did we persevere with an off-the-pace Junior Agogo, who is widely known to be carrying a restrictive knee injury, until as late as the 77th minute? I am sure that everyone connected with the team does not want to burn Haldane out by over-using him at such an early stage, but surely there is no pressure when the team is 3-0 down and heading for defeat - the game is already lost, so there is nothing to lose in giving him a decent run-out. As soon as he came on, Haldane perked up the attack and we managed to create a few openings. Lee Hodges had already seen his thunderbolt chalked off for controlling the ball on his arm earlier in the second half, and then Paul Tait headed in late on only for this to be disallowed too, due to Haldane being in an offside position, rather than Tait himself. Right at the death we won a penalty for a handball, and while no doubt a few groans were heard as Tait placed the ball on the spot, having missed one a year ago at Carlisle, he struck it home sweetly for his sixth goal in eleven league games - quite a ratio. It says something about this Division when your team finds itself still in the play-off zone on the back of three defeats in four games, and hopefully we will learn from the Mansfield experience and stop the rot, so that we can take advantage of the open field this year. © Chris Chappell - Friday 3rd October 2003 Back to Index