Left Stag: Dave Smith, Sandy Pate and Anglo Scottish Adventures in Ayr

It’s the first week of February 1974, in a coal-mining town just north of Nottingham and all is frozen still. The festive period feels very distant now and the final echoes of Auld Lang Syne have long-since faded. The people of the town have other things on their minds, but it is almost too cold to think. Those cars that take to the roads go slowly, as though following a funeral cortege. Record low temperatures and record high inflation compete for top billing on the evening news. 

The mood in the country is sombre, but in some places it is defiant. A middle-aged woman, wrapped in her coat and headscarf, drags her young son, similarly cocooned and grasping the latest Alvin Stardust single, across Mansfield’s market square. At the newsagents on the corner, she stops to catch her breath, exhaling a cloud into the freezing morning air, like a chimney. ‘Miners Out On Strike’ proclaims an A-board for the CHAD newspaper, but she already knows this. Her husband is one of them. She walks on and the boy twists his neck to look at the reverse side of the board, ‘Mansfield Rest Ahead Of Match With Crewe’, it reads, referring to the pause the team have, due to a recently postponed match. He’s football mad, like all the boys in the town, and his team is The Stags. 

Life continues in Mansfield, slowly and coldly, but in the corridors of power, things are moving. That winter, the English and Scottish FAs meet to arrange a new tournament with clubs from the two countries playing each other – and more locally, after the strike that brings down Ted Heath’s Conservative government, the miners and their families have won – for now. Stags are less victorious, finishing in 17th place in Division Four, and it’s time for another regime change. Scottish manager, Dave Smith, takes over. This is his first managerial job. Little is known or indeed expected of him, but the transformation is immediate and remarkable. Smith guides Mansfield to the title the following season, winning the league with a 7-0 thumping of Scunthorpe United. The stars are Gordon Hodgson, fellow Scotsman Sandy Pate and top scorer Ray Clarke (30 goals).

Mansfield are back in Division Three! They daren’t dream that they might go further. August brings the start of the new season, but with the added excitement that the club will participate in the inaugural Anglo-Scottish Cup. Mansfield first have to play a group stage against English clubs, which they navigate comfortably, beating Leicester and Hull, and drawing with West Brom. This success means they can now progress to face Scottish opposition. For the first time in the club’s history, Mansfield will play a competitive fixture on foreign soil, as their Scottish manager (Smith) and Scottish star (Pate) lead them out at Somerset Park to face Ayr United. 

The game has added significance for the young lad who stood freezing with his mum that day the miners went on strike. His granddad, a native of Ayrshire, was one of thousands who migrated to Mansfield for work after their own pits closed. Now, every village in the area rings with a multitude of accents – Glaswegian, Geordie, Welsh, Yorkshire, even Jamaican. Against the odds, Mansfield travel north and outplay their hosts to earn a 1-0 advantage. The boy picks up the CHAD and smiles as he reads of ‘a tremendous display of almost perfect football’. A great start for Mansfield. 

Ayr United happen to be his granddad’s home club. He tells his grandson how he heard German bombers flying back from Glasgow and how the orange skies of the Clydebank Blitz had glowed menacingly on the horizon. He talks about the side of the 1940s that struggled to achieve, but that he always liked Alex Ingram Sr as a player. “His son is now playing for Ayr, up front, you know!”, he explains. And he says to look out for a pacey winger called Doyle – “He’s bound to move to a bigger club”. When Ayr come to Field Mill for the second leg, the boy, his father and grandfather are among the 7000 or so fans in attendance. They witness another top performance from the Stags, who profit from set-pieces, just as they had in Scotland, to win 2-0. The boy is happy. For his granddad, it has been a proud moment and a strangely emotional and unexpected trip down memory lane. 

“Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?” he mutters to himself between puffs on a Player’s cigarette. For Stags, this is as far as they will go. Defeat to First Division Middlesborough (the eventual winners) sees them exit at the semi-final stage. For some fans, the Anglo-Scottish Cup has been a novel distraction from the league campaign, which sees Mansfield struggle badly until February, then go on a nineteen-match unbeaten run to finish in the top half. Now, the boy dares to dream. 

Even the surprise sacking of Dave Smith, who will be remembered as perhaps the club’s greatest manager, and the loss of top scorer Ray Clarke, can’t stop this team. Peter Morris takes over, Kevin Randall and Earnie Moss sign and within a season, Mansfield are in Division Two for the first time ever. These are the golden years – seasons that live long in the memories of those who witnessed them, but for one young boy and his grandad, those games in the Anglo-Scottish Cup live longest.