Midfielder Mitchell Rose put in a Man-of-the-Match winning performance in the 1-1 draw with Portsmouth, but was keen to praise his team-mates rather than focus on individual glory.
The Stags showed grit and determination against promotion-chasing Pompey and earned a point despite Ryan Tafazolli’s own goal, which cancelled out Matt Green’s opener. Goalkeeper Scott Shearer also made his third penalty save of the season after Marc McNulty was brought down by right-back Daniel Alfei.
And midfielder Rose put in arguably his best performance in a Stags’ shirt this afternoon, but deflected the plaudits away from himself and instead praised the team’s performance as a whole in his post-match interview.
“I don’t think it’s about the individual performance today, I think you’ve got to look at the collective as a team and just see how well the boys [did]. These boys keep pushing me on every single day in training, which helps me to be able to add something on a Saturday.
“I just went out there and just played free and tried to work hard for the team and just played a simple game and I think the manager put me out there for a disciplined role and I’d like to hope that I was able to do that today.”
The former Rotherham United man was also impressed with the performance of debutant Emmanuel Dieseruvwe, after he assisted Matt Green for the opening goal of the afternoon.
“It’s always difficult coming into a new set up, he’s only been here two days. It’s a great confidence boost for him, he’s very young, he just wants to go out and play games and he can take a lot of credit from that today.”
The midfielder also praised his team-mates’ ability to bounce back against one of League 2’s top teams after three consecutive 1-0 defeats.
“Mentally, this one was a really tough game with the calibre of team we’re coming up against and coming off the back of three 1-0 defeats where we thought we deserved a little bit more.
“It’s really mentally tough coming away from the previous game, but to go out there and do what we did is really unbelievable.
“The emphasis all week has been: we’ve got ten games left of the season, go out and enjoy it, play with a freedom and I think that’s what we did today. We played with that freedom and we got many chances, we’re just unfortunate with the goal that we conceded.”
After bringing the run of 1-0 defeats to an end, Rose is now looking forward to building on today’s result.
“We’ve got to look at today, where we can improve, where we were good, take that into the next game and from that game take it into the next game.
"We’ve just got to take it one game at a time. You can never hide away from the games that you’re playing against, but I think as a whole, you’ve just got to take it one game at a time.”
You can view Mitchell Rose’s post-match interview, in full, on Stags Player.
