Our man in Mansfield Josh Osoro Pickering is back from an away trip to Port Vale where he was very happy to partake in their local delicacy of Oatcakes...
As mentioned in my previous column, form will fluctuate for a middling club such as Mansfield. After some wins, some draws and some defeats, Stags have an away trip to Port Vale, our bread and butter (or oatcake and bacon). It’s a ground I’ve been to before and one I really like - a hodgepodge Frankenstein’s stadium of modern corporate suites, stanchion-supported low-sitting roofs, corrugated iron and faded yellow seats that probably haven’t ever been replaced. Great stuff.
The weather is horrendous though. Rain buckets down as we leave the car on a street nearby and hop-scotch over standing pools, cautious of passing buses. It’s futile - my trainers have seen better days and I’m already squelching. As we get closer to the ground, the floodlights come into view behind rows of terraced houses. This is proper stuff, I think to myself. Give me this over shiny, out of town industrial-park bowls any day of the week.
One of the terraced houses we pass is an unassuming shop front. White paint, a wide window and one big word in capital letters, ‘OATCAKES’. As when we sampled the local ale in Burton and the scouse in Liverpool, this Staffordshire delicacy is a must-try. The only other customer in the shop, a Vale fan, finds it hilarious that we, away visitors, are sampling their local fayre, “you’ve come for the oatcakes!”, he chuckles.
On the walk down we ask a copper for directions to the away end and before he tells us, he seems equally pleasantly surprised - “have you got oatcakes?!”. He directs us and we turn down a Victorian side-street. It’s industrial and old-school and the grey, wet weather fits just right. We head to the alley at the end of the road and a grizzly bear of a man passes me, staring hungrily at the snack in my hand. “ooooooh Oatcakes” he growls.
The brick-walled stand behind the goal is about as old-fashioned as you’ll find these days in a Football League increasingly populated with soulless new-builds, all ease and comfort. This isn’t that. The puddles are getting deeper and I have wet laundry in my shoes. We go in through heavy, cog-clinking turnstiles, up painted stairs and past some throw-back toilets. Arsenal will be coming here next, in the cup, and I can’t help but laugh at the thought of their fans, used to electronic membership-cards and £15 trays of street-food, making their way in here.
Inside the stand, it’s perfect for an away experience. The low roof helps with acoustics and two thousand travelling Mansfield fans make themselves well-heard with several renditions of Elvis’s The Wonder of You (adapted lyrics “we’re amber and blue”). For any afficionado of classic English stadia, this place is dripping with nostalgia. It’s also dripping with rainwater, as a hole in the stand to our left suddenly lets through a cascade onto the sideline below. On the pitch, it’s just as stormy. Ryan Sweeney is sent off after just fifteen minutes and Stags battle hard to go in 0-0 at half-time. Just as at Everton however, the inevitable goal comes less than ten minutes into the second half. Down to ten men and chasing a lead brings back bad memories of losing to Vale at Wembley in 2022, but whereas Stags were doomed that day, we keep battling here and, in the 86th minute, a moment of brilliance that we all know Rhys Oates can produce.
A surge of joy almost lifts the rickety roof off the away end, limbs going in all directions. I’m hugging random lads with skin-fades and their slapheaded dads! The elation of that goal, getting lost in the celebration, the worry you had a minute before totally wiped from your brain, is something you just can’t buy. Not even at Premier League prices, with VAR cynically hovering in the background, waiting to p*ss on your parade.
In true Mansfield fashion, we manage to give away a penalty in the 95th minute and lose the game. I remark to my mate that the moment when Oates-cake (as we’ve just nicknamed him) sent us all flailing around like maniacs, was worth the drive, the wet socks and even the gut-punch at the end. I’d sooner have that experience than be an Arsenal season-ticket holder, paying a king’s ransom to sit next to tourists while my team joylessly knock it from side to side, the keeper getting more touches than any other player, before it goes wide to a winger who crosses it low across the box for a tap in and another 1-0 win. No risk, no mistakes, no variation, no chants, no limbs, no uninterrupted celebrations - just bland, cleanly packaged product football.
Since the inception of the Premier League we’ve lost the character and soul of what made English football, in particular, so attractive. There’s no room now for the mavericks and hardmen that every team seemed to have. Imagine a Big Dunc or Gazza today. No one kung-fu kicks fans in the front row anymore! The golden-age of Premier League greed and the risk-averse Pep-ball it has spawned have drilled the individuality out of players like Jack Grealish in favour of an army of robotic Sakas. It bores me beyond words.
On the drive home, I wonder again about the Arsenal fans who will visit Vale Park in just a few days. The young ones who have only known Brand Prem will probably think it’s a dump, but the older fans, who remember Highbury and the many old grounds and figures of the past, will surely love it. Either way, they’ve all drunk the Kool-aid now. The nostalgia online is everywhere, with former players eulogising on podcasts for a bygone era when things were so just better. The market is there for it because mass-consumed football, at its highest level, is vacuous and dead. The lower leagues, from what I can see, represent the last hope for proper football in this country and what it should be about – the drama, feeling, noise, mud, fighting and banter with fellow fans. You can’t brand-up and fake genuine camaraderie, and fans of those clubs, being priced out and sold-out by men in suits, are talking with their feet.
If the lower echelons of the English pyramid can hold out against the growing commercialisation of the game and preserve what it is that still makes it so appealing, we have a chance of passing down this wonderful, singular thing to another generation. In the wake of our dramatic loss to Port Vale, Nigel Clough offers a frank and uncompromising interview about refereeing standards, the likes of which I’ve never seen - well, almost never - it’s pure Brian. I won’t attempt to describe it here. Just watch the link. It’s brilliant.
While I agree with almost everything he says, I really don’t want VAR at our level. It would be a nail in the coffin of what can seem, on a pessimistic day, like a near extinct animal, just going through the motions for another stay of execution. I have to believe there’s more hope than that. We need more passionate people in football, like Nigel, to speak up for what’s right and challenge the relentless power of the gatekeepers. As it happens, our next game sees us assigned a Premier League ref and this time, as if to prove my previous points about swings and roundabouts, it’s Stags who win with a late goal, beating Rotherham 2-1. “You’ve seen the Stags, now fuck off home”, goes the chant, as 1800 glum Yorkshiremen look on. I know the feeling well, but at least it’s a feeling.
Read more from Josh and his Left Stag column
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