Tom Bradshaw scores in the second minute in a 1-0 pre-season friendly win at Mansfield in July 2025

If it’s Thursday night, it must be footy night! What bright spark at Sky TV thought that showing a League One match live on a Thursday was a good idea? It’s clearly all part of a cunning plan to saturate football coverage: ‘no games on a Thursday? We’ll soon see about that’.

I’m not really sure who this televised fixture is aimed at. It won’t benefit either football club and I honestly can’t see how it benefits Sky either: ‘Ooh, I must subscribe to Sky, the Stags are played the U’s on the box on Thursday’ said no one ever. Really, what is the point?

One thing you can guarantee: an 8pm kick off on a Thursday evening will not have the terraces packed. The atmosphere, if there’s going to be one, will be, at best, muted. For the players and those few fans who are able to make the trip, it will probably be more akin to a pre-season friendly than a thud and blunder league encounter.

As it is, this will be the 19th time that United have made the trek up the M1 to Mansfield, a town where, like striking miners, the side doesn’t have the best record. In fact, Oxford have won just five of those previous 18 games, with the home side taking maximum points in twice as many meetings.

The first game was in Oxford’s first-ever season as a Football League side, with the first trip to Field Mill setting the scene for most of the future encounters, Mansfield winning 3-2 in December 1962. Oxford’s goals were both scored by lovable Johnny Love.

A New Year’s Day trip in 1966 resulted in the U’s best result in the birthplace of Quakerism, when braces from Graham Atkinson and Bill Calder had the Stags trembling as United won 4-1 in this Third Division match. In October that year, Mike Morris’s goal earned a 1-1 draw for the Morris Oxford men.

Oxford took just one point from their next four trips to Mansfieldshire, all in the third tier, but it was as a top-flight club that the U’s won on their next visit, a 2-0 League Cup second round, second leg tie in October 1987. Dean Saunders and a Steve Charles own goal took United into the third round on their way to an eventual semi-final exit.

United’s next trip to Field Mill came at the start of the millennium, as Mansfield beat Oxford 1-0 in November 2001 in the first round of the FA Cup.

It didn’t get any better in the league meeting in March that season, when Paul Moody’s goal was but a consolation in a 2-1 defeat.

This was followed by a game that wasn’t, when in March 2004 United’s game at Mansfield was abandoned at half-time due to high winds. Oxford had just appointed David Oldfield as caretaker manager and this was his first game in charge. However, by the time that the next Oxford match came round, Graham Rix had been given the permanent role and Oldfield’s shot at glory was merely a sentence in the history book (and I should know, I wrote it). The rearranged game, under Rix, resulted in a 3-1 defeat in April 2004 and practically meant an end to Oxford’s promotion hopes that season, despite a goal from Dean Whitehead.

This was ameliorated somewhat in March 2005 by a 3-1 victory, thanks to a Chris Hackett brace and a Steve Basham goal.

Results reverted to the norm on April Fools’ Day 2006, as United’s plummet out of the league continued with a single-goal defeat at the antlers hands of the stags. This was a game memorable only for the introduction of a bottle of wine into the away seats from outside the ground and Scot Gemmill’s sole 15-minute contribution to the Yellows before deciding that New Zealand was just about far enough away from the club for him to continue his career. Whether or not the ‘goal’ that won the game was correctly awarded is now insignificant, although at the time it had a direct effect on the Yellows’ survival hopes.

In December 2008, both sides were knocking about in the Conference (and now look at us, eh). Oxford were between managers, with Darren Patterson recently dismissed and Chris Wilder yet to be appointed, and so it was under the caretaker leadership of the great Jim Smith that United went to Mansfield and won 3-1, with goals from James Constable, Jamie Guy, and Sam Deering with his first for the U’s.

Beano was on target again the following season, when Mansfield won 2-1, and again in November 2013, when his 100th goal for the U’s contributed towards another 3-1 win. Sean Rigg had given Oxford the lead but the Stags equalised after being reduced to ten men. Constable restored the lead before the break and the result was wrapped up by Ryan Williams. Coincidentally, this game was live on TV on a Thursday night.

In August 2014 Danny Hylton’s penalty wasn’t enough to prevent Mansfield winning 2-1, with Oxford manager Michael Appleton reducing the dugout to rubble in his frustration (the man with the biggest muscles in domestic football against a sheet of perspex isn’t really a much of a competition). The Mansfield winner came from former U’s skipper Adam Murray, who was certainly suitable restrained in his celebrations.

United’s most recent visit to Field Mill came in the League Two promotion season, almost exactly a year later. United came back from a goal down to draw 1-1 thanks to Kemar Roofe’s second-half penalty after former Oxford hero Matt Green had missed a spot-kick of his own for the Stags.

The Match

Mansfield go into the game 14th in League One, but with wildly different home and away form. They have yet to pick up a win on the road but conversely haven’t lost at home this season. They have beaten Doncaster Rovers, Luton Town, and, last weekend, Bromley, while they drew 0-0 with Huddersfield despite being reduced to ten players just after half-time.

The win over Bromley came at a cost, with defender Adedeji Oshilaja having to be substituted for concussion right at the end and he remains doubtful for Thursday’s game. David McGoldrick is also a doubt, while Owen Dodgson remains suspended following that red card against the Terriers.

United came through their 2-1 win at Notts County on Saturday with no new injury worries, although it seems to have gone a bit quiet on Aidomo Emakhu’s recovery; the winger was due to return to fitness after the international break but was not included in the Meadow Lane squad, nor indeed the 18 that travelled to Exeter for the Trophy game. Jeon Jin-Woo and Ruben Roosken are both getting closer to being involved too, maybe.

Given that there is another game coming up on Tuesday, when bottom side Wigan Athletic are the visitors to the Kassam at the start of a busy period that sees United playing eight games in a month, it wouldn’t be too surprising to see some player rotation going on, although whether that’s in the thoughts of Aaron Ramsey is unknown.

Any changes are likely to revolve around the younger players, with Luka Lynch, fresh from yet another assist on Saturday, maybe being preferred to Mo Missanga. Kai Andrews did his chances of a recall no harm with a fine substitute performance at Meadow Lane, while Brodie Spencer and Jack Currie continue to duke it out for the left-back slot.

Should Oxford win, it would temporarily lift them into second place, ahead of the rest of this round of League One fixtures. It would also be the side’s fourth away win of the season (from five games), just one fewer than the previous two seasons combined. However, that is getting ahead of ourselves. I mean, it’s great that we have the opportunity to think like that, especially given the shit show going on behind the scenes at the club, but we still need to keep grounded and temper expectations, for our own sanity as much as anything.

Meanwhile, Oxford United Women travel to AFC Wimbledon on Sunday for their National League Southern Division fixture. The U’s sit top of the league and haven’t dropped a point or conceded a goal in their seven games so far. The Dons are fifth, but they do have a couple of games in hand over Oxford (albeit against fourth-placed Portsmouth and second-placed Fulham) so could bring themselves into contention with a win. Should be a doozy. Kick off is at 2pm at Imperial Fields, home to Tooting & Mitcham FC.

UTFO