sport news Mansfield Town owner John Radford: My dream is the Championship... Carolyn's is ... trends now
When local businessman John Radford bought Mansfield Town for £1 in September 2010, he celebrated with a 4-0 home win over Eastbourne Borough.
Just 2,312 fans turned up. The Stags were languishing in the Conference then.
Fourteen years, some serious investment and three sons later, the chairman and his glamorous wife Carolyn are bidding to take Mansfield into the third tier.
Nigel Clough’s team are top of League Two and Saturday’s game against struggling Colchester, which drew a 7,517 crowd, saw the Nottinghamshire club showcased to a live Sky Sports audience.
There was a buzz around the town, in the stands and certainly in the directors’ lounge where the Algarve-based Radfords took centre stage.
Mansfield Town have been transformed in the 14 years since John Radford purchased the club
‘Of course we’d love to be in League One,’ 58-year-old John tells Mail Sport. ‘We’ve got a good manager in Nigel, a good team and there’s a real sense of community behind the club.
‘When we took over, we had no training facilities but we’ve now got a category three training ground, which will hopefully become category two.
‘I feel that, if we got promoted, we could compete in League One. Don’t you, darling?’
Carolyn, the Stags’ chief executive, agrees: ‘I don’t think we’ll have to tweak the team too much if we go up.
‘Yes, we live in Portugal but you don’t need to tell Nigel how to do his job and we’ve got really strong people in key positions here. We’ve been motivating people from a distance for quite a long time now.’
The Radfords, whose sons Hugo, Albert and Rupert attend school in England, hasten to add that they are not getting ahead of themselves.
For here were two points dropped on a day when promotion rivals Stockport and Wrexham both won. Nevertheless, Mansfield are on the up and have been for some time.
