Mansfield Town vs Forest Green Rovers

THE GOLDEN ARCHIVE
‘HIS STORY’
PROJECTING A PARADE OF GLORIOUS DAYS FROM
THE WORLD’S OLDEST PROFESSIONAL GROUND.
From the sublime to the ridiculous
and everything in between, we look
back with a Stags’ hero of the past,
focusing on memorable behindthe-scenes
moments they will never
forget.
Continuing the season with
‘His-Story’ is former goalkeeper
Ian Bowling, who made 172
appearances for the club from 1995
to 2000.
here are a couple of stories
“Tthat spring to mind from
my time at the club. We had a good
team spirit at Mansfield – a good
bunch of lads with no egos, who
always stuck together.
One pre-season, under Steve Parkin,
we went to Ireland. We were based
in the middle of nowhere. There was
just one long street, a market square,
with a number of pubs. Steve told us
to go out for a pint on the night we
got there so, of course, we did.
We ventured into this first pub (a
squad of 17 of us), and it was like one
of those typical village scenarios –
with everyone stopping what they
were doing and looking at us as we
ventured through the front door.
Anyway, we went to the bar and
as we were in Ireland, we ordered
a round of Guinness. The landlord
served us – one of the lads went to
pick his up and the landlord stopped
him, saying it wasn’t ready yet – that
you have to tap the glass
with an Irish pound, and
it’s ready only when it
makes a certain noise.
We all stood there
tapping our pints and
Steve Harper said his
wasn’t ready, telling the
landlord he thought there
was something wrong
with his drink as it was
making a different sound
to everybody else’s. The
landlord swiftly picked
Steve’s pint up, looked
at it, took a sip … and
proceeded to neck
it all! He then put it
down before walking away saying
“Mmm, nothing wrong with that pal!”.
We were all laughing as Harper was
stood raging, left without a pint!
There was another time we went out,
around Christmas one year. This was
when Brian ‘Killer’ Kilcline was at the
club. Every day Brian would turn up
to training dressed in sports jacket,
collar and tie, whilst everyone else
would be in jeans or tracksuit.
Anyway, someone said that at
Christmas we should all go out
dressed as ‘Killer’ - which we did! So,
this one year, we’d all gone to the
local charity shops and bought some
garish jackets, ties and shirts – all
typical of the type Brian would wear.
After training, Killer was in the
dressing room on his own and then
we all walked in. As you can imagine,
Brian wasn’t expecting the sight of us
all dressed like him – but he took it in
his stride and he blended in perfectly!
It was all good fun.”
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