Pre-season

With the season ticket now out in the open I wait with baited breath for the fixture list for the upcoming season.

Now I commend myself for my knowledge of both football teams and British Geography with no less than a 'B' grade GCSE to my name.

However I am struggling to guess the origin of many of the teams visiting Field Mill this season. There are a fair share of former league stalwarts who have fallen on hard times, but for every Luton, York, Wrexham and Oxford there's a Histon, Grays Athletic and Ebbsfleet.

My first visit of the season to Field Mill is a 'friendly' v. Walsall. I go along to check out my home for the next season. It should be a balmy July evening with the orange sun setting on the close of a hot summers day.

It is well and truly pissing it down by the time I leave the front door.

I am appropriately dressed and wonder whether the shorts, brown suede slip-ons and cagoule look will ever really catch on.

There is a lot of hope around the football club at the start of the season no doubt replicated by teams and supporters up and down the country.

The period just before the start of the season is probably the only time to be truly optimistic. Last seasons disappointments are forgotten and you can be forgiven for believing that the 10 players shipped in from other teams in a similar predicament could feasibly turn into world beaters or at least Blue Square Premier beaters.

The atmosphere is good with 1700 having turned out on a wet pre-season evening.

Walsall play 2 divisions up from Mansfield and are expected therefore to be a formidable challenge having brought out most of their expected first team. Needless to say Mansfield are 3-0 up at half-time and playing a good mix of long ball and incisive short passing through the middle of the park.

The new signings look good but it's one of last years player's, Briscoe, in midfield who impresses.

Where you sit in the ground greatly affects your view of the proceedings. I have often discussed matches me and friends have attended separately only to wonder if we've been watching different matches as the perspective of the game changes depending upon the angle of view.

My season ticket replicates the managers dug out but on the other side of the pitch.

I feel close to the action but save where the play is in the goal mouth the view is very much 2-Dimensional. I get little insight into through balls, movement around the pitch or formation.

It makes me wonder why the managers sit in the dug outs. They must not get much of an overall view of their team or crucially what is working and what is not.

There is also a group to my left of clearly veteran season ticket holders who despite clearly having seen a lot of football in their time have a rudimentary view of the game. They clearly think passing the ball sideways, never mind backwards to retain possession is a crime of the highest order.

I resist the temptation of educating them in the ways of Rinus Michels and Valeriy Lobanovskyi and the 'total football' movement of the early 1970's and return to my pie.

I wonder whether they have always been like this or whether a succession of managers over the last 30 years have lead them to the conclusion that shooting from the halfway line is the only not used and therefore the best tactic for success.

I learn from the posters along the corridors inside the ground that Mansfield's last and only visit in to the second tier of the English league structurewas in 1977-78.

All being said and despite letting one in early in the second half Mansfield look like starting the campaign with a strong squad and a positive approach. I conclude that a return to the football league seems a reasonable prospect.

The team in amber and blue walk confidently back to the changing rooms no doubt pondering what the season has in store.

I ponder the same as I trundle home in the almost dark. It is still raining.