Forest Green home preview

[Sweden Stag]

Following the disappointing, to print the most appropriate, home display against Grimsby last Saturday, the Stags are at headquarters again. The opponents now are a side against which the Stags have a 100% home record in League fixtures, namely Forest Green Rovers.

The Stroud side, now in their third League Two campaign, have so far this season featured around the promotion and playoff zone but have faltered a bit lately, winning just once in their last eight EFL fixtures, albeit drawing quite a few.

In our away game at FGR a few months ago, the Stags came back in dramatic fashing being two goals down to secure a lucky point. A brace from Andy Cook, the first coming just two minutes after that FGR had gone two up, was enough.

Stags away form so far has been much better than at One Call, where only two games have been won, the latest being the 6-1 rout of Oldham the week before our latest trip to the New Lawn.

Two home games won so far are the worst outcome since our EFL comeback season in 2013-14. During that campaign, we had also won just two out of our first 13 home games, no three-pointer at headquarters between September 21, 2013 (3-0 against Northampton) and February 8, 2014 (2-1 against Southend). Prior to that, we had two wins and eight defeats after thirteen home games in the 1990-91 third tier campaign.

Last season’s away game against Forest Green belongs to the very few original games being abandoned in preview history as the original fixtures was abandoned at half-time with the sides deadlocked at 0-0 due to a waterlogged pitch. One month later, the sides played out a 1-1 draw in a fixture worthy of two sides chasing promotion last term.

Over the years,the Stags have won twice at Forest Green. The latest one was during the record-breaking twelve-match winning run in 2013. Just after breaking the record to a 2-0 victory against Grimsby on March 12, 2013, the Stags emerged 2-1 winners at Forest Green under tricky weather conditions.

At One Call, Forest Green have yet to take a single point from a league fixture d as the Stags won all five at headquarters in the Conf, among them a last-gasp one in October 2012, also a 2-0 early on in 2017-18 which was to be the first-ever FGR League Two defeat.

And in each and every home game during this stage against Forest Green, the Stags ran out as winners. The most recent one of those was a very late crucial one. An 89th minute Matt Rhead header in front of just 60 FGR fans sealed the tie in the Stags’ favour. And that was in fact the highest FGR turnout at Mansfield during these years, a turnout that was more than doubled as 147 FGR fans watched the first-ever Forest Green away FL fixture in their history and also, as noted above, their first-ever Football League defeat. And last season, 171 FGR fans travelled to One Call.

Last season, a Tyler Walker strike midway through the second-half sealed the tie in the Stags’ favour, also being the fourth Stags 1-0 home victory against FGR of all time.

And the only time FGR have ever won at Mansfield, was in the FA Cup a decade ago after a replay. In fact, the Stags were lucky to even gain a replay at headquarters in the first round then.

As Forest Green won the promotion playoff final against Tranmere Rovers in 2017, they no longer were the
longest-serving National League side. They made their debut way back in 1998-99, then playing against i.e. Doncaster and Hereford, and were reprieved from relegation on two occasions, 2004-05 when Northwich took voluntary relegation and again in 2009-10, when Salisbury were thrown out for the first time at the end of that season.

There has been some player traffic between the two clubs in recent seasons. Since the end of the 2009-10 campaign, Forest Green had Craig Armstrong as player coach as well as Luke Jones, who scored TWICE against Forest Green in a man-of-the-match-performance when the Stags overturned a half-time 1-0 deficit into a convincing 4-1 victory at The New Lawn on January 30, 2010.

Last campaign, FGR fielded two ex-Stags: Lee Collins and Paul Digby. But none of those are now in Gloucestershire as Collins now represents Yeovil and Digby is playing for Stevenage.

In the 2008-09 season, the Stags faced Forest Green for the first time ever. Below a rundown of those fixtures:

In the away fixture on November 22, 2008, the Stags were unlucky to lose by the only goal of the game, while the home one on March 14, 2009, was to be a record-breaker as the 3-0 home victory then was to the Stags' sixth consecutive home fixture without conceding a single goal. The stats, then included on the Stagsnet latest news page, showed these figures:

* 1-0 against Crawley on January 17, 2009
* 0-0 against Rushden & Diamonds on January 28, 2009
* 1-0 against York on February 7, 2009
* 0-0 against Kettering on February 17, 2009
* 1-0 against Lewes on March 7, 2009
* 3-0 against Forest Green on March 14, 2009

In total, it was to be 656 minutes, between the 37th minute in the home game against Burton on December 29, 2008, and the 63rd minute of the home game against Torquay on March 28, 2009, when Blair Sturrock (later to play for the Stags) equalized for the Gulls in the 1-1 draw at Field Mill. This was also in the spell of fifteen Field Mill games without defeat at Field Mill under David Holdsworth, ended by very controversial officiating against Stevenage a few weeks before the BSP 2009-10 home fixture against Forest Green.

More details on previous Stags v FGR fixtures are found in the Match Centre.

Here are some facts about Forest Green:

Two successive promotions in the late nineties enabled FGR to play in the Conference from 1998-99 onwards.
First in 1996-97, winning the Southern League Southern Division title, and in the following campaign, the championship of the Southern League Premier Division. And Forest Green's first-ever Conf game ended in a 2-0 defeat at home to Rushden & Diamonds on August 15, 1998. But Forest Green's first ever Conf three-pointer was gained on September 5, 1998 at, of all places, Doncaster! This was in Doncaster's darkest hours following their relegation from the Football League in 1997-98.

Most of Forest Green's National League campaigns were those of avoiding relegation. But in the 2007-08 season, they finished a then best-ever eight, and started the 2008-09 campaign very well. After six games, Forest Green were inside the playoffs position. But a number of injuries contributed to FGR plummeting down the table into the relegation zone after playing twelve BSP games without winning before the home game against the Stags. But Jim Harvey, formerly long.time boss at Morecambe, did steer his side into the third round of the FA Cup for the first time ever. Well there, Forest Green were rewarded with a plum home tie against the 2007-08 season's PL whipping-boys Derby County (yet all the Rams' last seven PL games were sell-outs!!!) and made a very good account for the BSP by only going down by the odd goal in seven. In that game, Derby were really on the brink of crashing out in front of a very good crowd, 4836. Beat that, some League Two sides! In the end, Forest Green stayed up due to a large number of away draws, ten in all.

Yet a few players have appeared for the Stroud side as well as for the Stags. Best known are Ryan Williams and Jefferson Louis. Both players also starred for Weymouth and came from the Terras to the Stags, Williams was in his second Stags spell before leaving for Gainsborough, while Jefferson Louis while at Wrexham hit his best-ever scoring run for any club he has played for, he has now played for more than a dozen clubs having appeared in the BSP in previewing history. Louis and Williams played for Forest Green in the 2004-05, but not together. Another one, found while doing the preview of the 2017-18 home fixture, but not found in November 2008, was the late Matt Gadsby, whose last BSP station was Forest Green, also in 2004-05. Gadsby played 66 games in two seasons for the Stroud side, and together with Louis and Williams. Luke Graham, who as a Luton player who caused the penalty which on the rebound sent the Stags to Wembley in 2011, has had two spells at Forest Green. And the first-ever player to play for both sides in the FL is Lee Collins, who played the full 90 minutes of Forest Green’s first-ever FL game on an opening day which saw a staggering amount of 50 goals scored, including Yeovil’s highest-ever FL defeat, 8-2 at Luton, while the National League winners of 2016-17, Lincoln, managed a 2-2 draw at Wycombe. The second player to play FL games for both the Stags and FGR was Chris Clements, eleven FGR games including three as sub, on loan from Barrow. A third one is Alex Iacovitti, who started in ten FGR games during the 2017-18 campaign. Iacovitti was in the Oldham side which was routed by the Stags last October.

All the players who have been traced playing for both sides are listed below. Here they are:

James Alabi, Tomi Ameobi, Craig Armstrong, Michael Brough, Jon Challinor, Chris Clements, Lee Collins, Paul Digby, Ross Dyer, Matt Gadsby, Luke Graham, Alex Iacovitti, Guy Ipoua, James Jennings, Luke Jones, Marcus Kelly, Paul McLoughlin, Gary Mills, Jefferson Louis, Aaron O’Connor, George Pilkington, Mark Preece, Richard Smith, Matt Somner, Thomas Stanton, Paul Stonehouse, Alex Sykes, Sam Wedgbury, Ryan Williams.

Stats file:

Home: P 7, W 7, D 0, L 0, GF 12, GA 1
Away: P 8, W 2, D 3, L 3, GF 11, GA 11

2008-09 3-0 2009-03-14 0-1 2008-11-22 BSP
2009-10 1-0 2009-10-03 4-1 2010-01-30 BSP
2010-11 3-1 2010-08-14 1-2 2010-11-13 BSP
2011-12 1-0 2012-01-07 1-1 2011-10-01 BSP
2012-13 1-0 2012-10-13 2-1 2013-03-15 BSP
2017-18 2-0 2017-08-12 0-2 2018-03-24 League Two
2018-19 1-0 2019-02-23 1-1 2019-01-29 League Two
2019-20 (at FGR) 2-2 2019-10-19 League Two

FA Cup

2009-10 1-1 2009-11-07 1st round at The New Lawn
2009-10 1-2 2009-11-17 1st round replay at Field Mill

Should be nice to end the home hoodoo. Expect a tight game. Come on Mansfield!

[part time pete]

Seven league home wins out of seven, what could go wrong tomorrow with history like that.