Malta Fears Eased

Mansfield Town have moved to ease supporters worries over the pre season tour to Malta, by announcing a friendly with a Maltese XI.

After stinging comments in the past week or so, with many fans upset 8 months had passed before the original press release over the trip had come out, and no game had been announced.

It led many to believe, and comment (including this writer), that it would be a week long glorified training exercise, at great cost to the Stags supporters.

It was widely expected up to 400 fans would make the trip, however a few have been put off and not followed up on bookings, given the length of time taken to announce any sort of meaningless game.

Now the club have announced the first team will play a Maltese Select XI on Thursday 6th July.

The game will be played at the training ground of the Ta’ Qali National Stadium, Malta, and supporters can watch the game free of charge.

If it sounds all hastily arranged, then it certainly comes across that way.

The club even made their announcement on the match, sound like a well prepared statement, it went as such on the Official Website
“It has been our absolute priority in past months to arrange a first team friendly as part of the one-week trip.

The club always acts in the best interests of our supporters and we hope their time in Malta will be thoroughly enjoyable as we now all look forward to watching our exciting new-look squad for the first time.”

Even the arranging of an under 21 friendly the night before against St Andrews, from the island, hasn’t gone fully to appease some supporters.

Ok, so at this point, we are one of them, having planned our tip from the Friday, which all seems rather pointless now given the games are all before we fly out, and we aren’t the only ones.

We were hoping to bring live updates of some fantastic pre-season action in the sun, but hey ho!!