Mansfield Town Football Club is an English professional
association football
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...
club based in
Mansfield,
Nottinghamshire
Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated Notts.) is a landlocked county in the East Midlands region of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. The trad ...
. As of the
2016–17 season, they play in
League Two
The English Football League Two (often referred to as League Two for short or Sky Bet League Two for sponsorship purposes, and known as the Football League Two from 2004 until 2016) is the third and lowest division of the English Football Lea ...
, the fourth tier level of the
English football league system. The club was formed in 1897 as Mansfield Wesleyans. In 1906, the club turned professional, after which the Methodist church disowned the club and forbade them to use the name "Wesleyans". The club reacted by changing its name to Mansfield Wesley, before adopting the current name Mansfield Town in 1910.
The club began its existence playing in the Mansfield and District Amateur League. In 1911, Mansfield became a founding member of a new league, the Central Alliance. In 1919, the club moved to
Field Mill
Field Mill, currently known as One Call Stadium for sponsorship reasons, is a football ground in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, England, and the home of Mansfield Town Football Club.
It is the oldest ground in the Football League, hosting footb ...
, which remains their ground to this date, and in 1921, the club joined the
Midland League
The Midland Football League is an English football league that was founded in 2014 by the merger of the former Midland Alliance and Midland Combination. The league has four divisions that sit at levels 9–12 of the football pyramid.
History
T ...
. In 1924, the club applied to join
the Football League
The English Football League (EFL) is a league of professional association football, football clubs from England and Wales. Founded in 1888 as the Football League, the league is the oldest such competition in Association football around the wor ...
, but was turned down. The club unsuccessfully applied several times to join the northern section of Football League's
Third Division. However, in 1931, the club changed tactics and applied for membership in the
southern section
The California Interscholastic Federation-Southern Section (CIF-SS) is the governing body for high school athletics in most of Southern California and is the largest of the ten sections that comprise the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF ...
, and was finally elected to the league. The following season, Mansfield was transferred to the northern section to replace
Wigan Borough who had folded during the previous season. The club remained in the bottom two divisions of the league with the exception of a single season at the
second tier in
1977–78.
The club also won the
Football League Trophy
The English Football League Trophy, known for sponsorship purposes as the Papa Johns Trophy after restaurant chain Papa John's Pizza, is an annual English association football knockout competition open to all clubs in EFL League One and EFL Le ...
in
1987
File:1987 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The MS Herald of Free Enterprise capsizes after leaving the Port of Zeebrugge in Belgium, killing 193; Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashes after takeoff from Detroit Metropolitan Airport, ...
, and defeated
West Ham United
West Ham United Football Club is an English professional football club that plays its home matches in Stratford, East London. The club competes in the Premier League, the top tier of English football. The club plays at the London Stadium, hav ...
to reach the quarter-finals of the
FA Cup
The Football Association Challenge Cup, more commonly known as the FA Cup, is an annual knockout football competition in men's domestic English football. First played during the 1871–72 season, it is the oldest national football competi ...
in
1968–69. In
2007–08, Mansfield Town was
relegated
In sports leagues, promotion and relegation is a process where teams are transferred between multiple divisions based on their performance for the completed season. Leagues that use promotion and relegation systems are often called open leagues. ...
to the
Football Conference
The National League (named Vanarama National League for sponsorship reasons) is an association football league in England consisting of three divisions, the National League, National League North, and National League South. It was called the ...
. They won promotion back to the Football League in
2012–13
1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. I ...
.
Goalkeeper
Rod Arnold owns the club record for most games played for Mansfield Town. He made a total of 513 appearances for the club, 440 of those being in the league, between 1971 and 1984.
Sandy Pate is second on Mansfield's all-time appearance list with 479 first-team games (413 in the league). Defenders
Don Bradley,
Kevin Bird and
George Foster, the latter of whom also served as manager of the club, have also played more than 400 matches for Mansfield Town.
Harry Johnson owns the club's all-time goalscoring record, with 114 goals. Incidentally, Johnson is also
Sheffield United
Sheffield United Football Club is a professional football club in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, which compete in the . They are nicknamed "the Blades" due to Sheffield's history of cutlery production. The team have played home games at ...
's all-time top goalscorer, having scored more than 200 goals for the Blades.
Ken Wagstaff
Kenneth Wagstaff (born 24 November 1942) is an English former footballer noted for his playing career at Mansfield Town and Hull City football clubs. In 2000, club fans of both Mansfield Town and Hull City voted Wagstaff their club's player of t ...
is second on the list with 106 goals, while
Steve Wilkinson is third with 91 goals. The record for most goals in a single season belongs to
Ted Harston, who scored 55 goals for Mansfield in the
1936–37 season, and was subsequently sold to
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a populat ...
.
Players with 50 or more appearances
''The list comprises players with at least 50 first-team appearances, or 25 first-team goals for Mansfield Town since the club was elected to The Football League in 1931. Appearances and goals are for matches in
the Football League
The English Football League (EFL) is a league of professional association football, football clubs from England and Wales. Founded in 1888 as the Football League, the league is the oldest such competition in Association football around the wor ...
(including
playoffs
The playoffs, play-offs, postseason or finals of a sports league are a competition played after the regular season by the top competitors to determine the league champion or a similar accolade. Depending on the league, the playoffs may be eit ...
and the war-abandoned
1939–40 season),
Conference National,
FA Cup
The Football Association Challenge Cup, more commonly known as the FA Cup, is an annual knockout football competition in men's domestic English football. First played during the 1871–72 season, it is the oldest national football competi ...
,
League Cup
In several sports, most prominently association football, a league cup or secondary cup generally signifies a cup competition for which entry is restricted only to teams in a particular league. The first national association football tournament t ...
,
Football League Trophy
The English Football League Trophy, known for sponsorship purposes as the Papa Johns Trophy after restaurant chain Papa John's Pizza, is an annual English association football knockout competition open to all clubs in EFL League One and EFL Le ...
,
FA Trophy,
Conference League Cup
The Conference League Cup (formerly known as the Setanta Shield for sponsorship reasons, and before that the Bob Lord Trophy) was a football competition open to clubs playing in the Football Conference.
History
The competition was formed for t ...
, as well as the now-defunct
Football League Group Cup
The Football League Group Cup was a short-lived football competition which first took place during the 1981–82 season. For English clubs it was a replacement for the Anglo-Scottish Cup, which had been discontinued due to the withdrawal of Scot ...
,
Anglo-Scottish Cup
The Anglo-Scottish Cup was a tournament arranged for teams in the English and Scottish football leagues during the summer for several years during the 1970s. It was created in 1975 as a new incarnation of the Texaco Cup, with a similar format t ...
,
Watney Cup
The Watney Mann Invitation Cup (normally referred to as simply the Watney Cup) was a short-lived English football tournament held in the early 1970s.
It was held before the start of the season, and was contested by the teams that had scored th ...
,
Third Division North Cup and
Third Division South Cup. Substitute appearances are included.''
''The career field in the table indicates the seasons in which the player was on Mansfield's books. For instance, if the field says 1982–1991, it means this player played his first game for Mansfield in the 1982–83 season, and his last game for the club in the 1990–91 season, but not necessarily in every intervening season. However, if the player had two or more separate spells with the club, this is indicated with separate time periods in the table.''
''Statistics correct as of the end of the
2015–16 season. Current Mansfield Town players (as of 18 August 2016) listed in bold.''
Position key:
GK – Goalkeeper
In many team sports which involve scoring goals, the goalkeeper (sometimes termed goaltender, netminder, GK, goalie or keeper) is a designated player charged with directly preventing the opposing team from scoring by blocking or intercepting o ...
;
FB – Full-back;
CD – Central defender
In the sport of association football, a defender is an outfield position whose primary role is to stop attacks during the game and prevent the opposition from scoring.
Centre-backs are usually positioned in pairs, with one full-back on either s ...
;
MF – Midfielder
A midfielder is an outfield position in association football.
Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in that case known as defensive midfielders. As central midfielders often go across boundarie ...
;
WI – Winger;
FW – Forward
Sources
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References
{{Lists of football players in England
Players
Mansfield Town
Mansfield Town Football Club is a professional football club based in the town of Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, England. The team competes in , the fourth tier of the English football league system. Nicknamed 'The Stags', they play in a blue and ...
Association football player non-biographical articles