Never mind 15 minutes of fame. Adam Murray, on the eve of his first home match as so-called permanent manager of Mansfield, said: “It will be a proud moment for five seconds but then my mind will be on making sure the lads perform.” For 86 minutes they did and the Stags led from the 55th minute. Then Cheltenham equalised and he said afterwards: “The lads know I’m not happy. It’s down to a lack of focus and leadership.” A win would have taken them above the Robins. As it is, they remain a point and place behind, now 19th in League Two.
On the face of it the match, between lowly neighbours on the league ladder, may have looked unremarkable but Murray, at 33, is the youngest manager of the 92 at the oldest ground in the world staging professional football. Field Mill started as a football ground in 1861 and has staged the Stags’ games since 1916. It has a modern name, too, and a shopping complex adjacent but is in touch with Nottingham via the Robin Hood Line. Like Tranmere on Merseyside, Mansfield are the third, forgotten, club of their area.
Even fans have forgotten them this season. Saturday’s crowd of 3,324 was the nearest it has been to last season’s average of 3,385, when the club came back from five years in the Conference, though loyalty knows few bounds. In late April 2003, as Mansfield were losing 2-0 at Tranmere and facing relegation from the third tier, a supporter climbed a floodlight pylon, jumped on to the Cow Shed roof and got the match abandoned. Other results sent them down anyway before the replay.
The extra numbers here looked like a tribute to Murray. In three stints he played 180 games for the club as a combative midfielder, most of them since he returned in 2011 and became captain, then assistant manager as well to Paul Cox. His last game was on 18 November, which was also Cox’s. After a promising start to the season, with five wins in nine games, the Stags got into a rut in October. Four draws were bracketed by two defeats either side and the chairman, John Radford, who has stabilised the club since buying it for £1 in 2010, ended a three-and-a-half-year stint and gave Murray the full-time keys after three games as caretaker.
“The season is not over for us,” Radford said, calculating that “1.8 points a match would give us a chance of the play-offs”. That is only the short term. “I want to be in the Championship,” he said. “That’s my target for Adam – hopefully in three or four seasons. We interviewed six managers before him and they were all similar – carbon copies of the first.” He was pleased to give the opportunity to “one of our own”.
Murray, refreshingly, sounded unlike one on Saturday. “Through my own fault I didn’t play long enough at the highest level,” he said in his first programme notes. “Now on the other side of the fence I aim to go as high as I can for as long as possible.” Beforehand he had said: “It’s strange. I’ve gone from being kind of a grandad as a player to the baby of the Football League.”
In suggesting he had “contacts in the game” he seemed to prove it in the shape of Junior Brown, newly engaged on loan from Oxford United and a twisting, darting wide man who played with his head up. Murray said afterwards: “We were not explosive enough to penetrate their back four or dynamic enough to put them on the back foot.” Brown was not responsible, the 4-1-4-1 system was, with Crewe’s Vadaine Oliver, also on loan, winning balls up front but with no one for his flick-ons. Murray hoped “people have seen a change in style – free-flowing, fast and energetic” and said: “We can’t wait to take you on our journey.” Another striker may speed them there.
Oliver eventually went on his own, chesting down, turning his man and volleying in from 30 yards. Murray, in a rare lapse into managers’ speak, had said: “We need to make this a fortress.” Unfortunately they left a window open and, directly from a throw-in, Zack Kotwica found “three yards of space” to curl a shot in from the same distance.
On the subject of windows, Radford promised money would be available in January, as did Cheltenham’s Paul Baker to his new manager, Paul Buckle. Perhaps chairmen can be carbon copies at Christmas. Certainly, as another Nottingham legend said: “It takes only a second to score a goal” – rather more for Murray to get over it. Robins are about to have their season. Murray’s is unlikely to be run of the mill.
