Mansfield Town v Rushden And Diamonds Preview

It’s another huge game this weekend for us. Chester are looking ever likely to be kicked out of the Conference leaving us 6 points short. To keep the play off dream alive we must win tomorrows game.

Earlier on in the season when we played Rushden it was a pretty even match. After both Gary Mills and Lee Tomlin got sent off neither side looked like scoring, until a freak own goal in the last minute gave Rushden a valuable 3 points. Match highlights from that game can be found here.

Rushden currently have two former Stags plying their trade at Nene Park. Aaron O’Connor and Jefferson Louis. O’Connor signed for us last season from Grays Athletic and always impressed me when he played. We all know that he is a handful with his pace. He didn’t find the back of the net enough whilst he was with us though . Still,  I was dissapointed when he was released in the summer. Louis signed for us from Weymouth in January 2008. Billy Dearden brought him in as a target man to help Boulding and Brown. At times Louis showed alot of promise for us and he scored quite a few crucial goals in our relegation season. Wycombe away and Darlington away both spring to mind immediately. Unfortunately he seemed disinterested at times which meant the fans got on his back a fair bit. He was released at the end of that season and signed for Wrexham a few weeks later.

After watching the game back in September I can say that Rushdens danger man is Lee Tomlin. He was only on the field for 30minutes but he caused us no end of problems. Not the quickest of wingers but he is skillful. I can remember him running the length of the pitch taking on about 4 or 5 of our players then the post denied him of what would have been an excellent goal. He’s managed to score 11 goals in 24 appearances from the left wing this season. Silky will have to be alert all afternoon to shut down the major threat of this guy.

In our squad we have a bit of a Rushden and Diamonds ‘legend’. Andy Burgess. He racked up 286 appearances in 11 seasons at Nene Park. It will be the second time Burgess has played against Rushden this season. He was in the Luton team that lost 2-0 to Rushden back in October. I expect he will be looking to get his own back this weekend! He is now of course free to play after he has served his 1 month ban for betting on games that he was involved with.

Rushden are on a good run of form at the moment despite losing 1-0 at Oxford in midweek. Before the loss they were 7 games unbeaten in the league and had collected 19 points from a possible 21. The loss in midweek helps us to just about keep in touch with the play offs. After our 4-2 victory at Tamworth last Saturday our confidence will be high. Duffy, Shaw and Sturrock all managed to bag a goal in that game so DH has a few headaches regarding his team selection.

Hopefully we will manage to get a decent crowd in for the match. After the ‘pay what you want’ offer against Gateshead it will be interesting to see how many come back and pay full price. With a decent following from Rushden we could probably push towards the 3,500 mark. Rushden took 382 on Tuesday night to the Kassam.  A repeat performance of that following on Saturday would please me! It would also give us a chance to create some banter with the away fans because the North Stand would have be open for once!

Score prediction: 2-0 Stags!

Team line up prediction:

Marriott

Silk – Garner – Foster – Nicholas

Williams – Mills – Challinor – Nix

Duffy – Shaw

Picture: Richard Parkes/Mansfield Town.net