Assistant boss Joe Dunne says that the Stags’ management team will continue to ‘push standards’ after a ‘great win’ at home to Newport County AFC on Saturday.
Frontman Danny Rose scored the game’s only goal in treacherous conditions at One Call Stadium to give the amber and blue an important three points.
Mansfield’s assistant manager says that the key is to now ‘remain committed’ after the weekend’s victory.
“The effort and commitment from the team [against Newport] was exceptional,” he told iFollow Stags. “The courage at the end of the game to see out the result in difficult conditions, it was a great win.
“We’re not going to get carried away – the gaffer [Graham Coughlan] expects this on a regular basis. They key thing is we approach training this week with the same mentality.
“We want to push our standards and remain committed – we want to keep the motivation high to try and get more wins.
“I think any kind of result, especially in the manner that we did it, helps everyone. It helps confidence and we made one or two changes on the day, which helps with competition for places.
“Overall, it was a good day, but it was just one day. We’d like some more.”
The 46-year-old also spoke of manager Graham Coughlan’s approach to leading training sessions – something that the boss is ‘passionate’ about.
“The lads are settling down into the system of choice that we’re playing. We’re seeing in games the ability of players to carry out our messages.
“We’re seeing the team digging in and fitness levels rising. We saw out the [Newport] game when it was in that stoppage time area.
“We’re making small improvements, but improvements that will hopefully add up to making us much better.
“We’ll continue to work on some ideas that we have going forward – we’re already beginning the work on Cheltenham.
“We have to maintain fitness levels. The manager [Graham Coughlan] is in the gym with them continuing those intensive sessions to keep the players progressing.
“It’s something that he loves and is passionate about – that’s what the gaffer is, he wants to be amongst it and wants to lead from the front. That’s the type of guy he is. That’s the enthusiasm he brings, to train hard.”
Looking ahead to the Stags’ next fixture, away at promotion-hopefuls Cheltenham Town on Saturday, Dunne believes Mansfield ‘have enough’ to get a positive result, but will have to be ‘100 per cent professional and ready.’
“The key thing for us is performance – we want consistency of performance,” he added. “We play a team who are going for promotion and have been consistent all season.
“We just have to go into the next game, perform exceptionally well, and hopefully get a result.
“There is distance between the two teams, in terms of the table. We have to make sure that we’re 100 per cent professional and ready, which we believe we can be and should be.
“They’re in a situation like us, as points are important to them. We feel we have enough to go and get a result.
“Cheltenham have, of course, got quality. When you get to the business end of the season, every game is massive.
“We’re not in a position to take anything for granted here – we have to keep working hard. We’ve shown that we can go and compete against those teams [higher in the table].
“The pressure is on those types of teams that this time of the season, as they have a lot to lose, whereas we have a lot to gain – that’s the mentality and motivation we have, is to make sure we finish as high as we can.”
There was also an injury update on three of Mansfield’s current absentees.
“Joe [Riley, pictured below, right] has improved immensely. He’s had some grass time yesterday and will have some more today with the medical team.
“We expect him to hopefully be back with the group this week, so that’s really encouraging news.
“His recovery is good – but we have to understand that he’s come here and played a lot of games in a short space of time.
“Missing the weekend probably gave him that bit of breathing space, but Hayden [White] went in and did well – so that’s good for competition for places.
“Joe would probably expect to be back in and around it this week which, again, boosts the confidence of the group.
“Macca [Alex MacDonald] is probably still a week short. He felt a little unwell over the weekend which has caused a slight setback – hopefully he’ll be back in and around it sooner rather than later.
“Kellan [Gordon] had a little bit of a setback so we’ll wait for an update on that.”
iFollow Stags subscribers can watch Joe’s interview in full by logging into mansfieldtown.net/ifollow later today.
