Keith Mansfield

I’m Keith and I’m a Derby fan. There – I’ve admitted it. I actually grew up in West Bridgford, Nottingham, the location of the City Ground. However, from when I was five years old I shared a season ticket to the Baseball Ground, then home of Brian Clough’s Derby County, with my older brother. We alternated matches, but I seemed to get all the good ones. My dad’s from Derby and I guess he didn’t want us led astray by the locals.

Keith Mansfield in front of the Clough & Taylor statue at Derby County's Pride Park Stadium

In those days the pitch was famously a mudbath, but the football was beautiful. Under Clough and assistant, Peter Taylor, Derby won the league title and reached the semifinals of the European Cup (the days when the Champions League was for champions only), losing controversially to Juventus. A few years later we won the league again under Dave Mackay and I remember watching us demolish Real Madrid 4-1 at the Baseball Ground in another European Cup campaign, with a Charlie George hat-trick.

Nowadays, the Pride Park pitch is a smooth carpet of green, like a snooker table, but the quality of the football doesn’t live up to it. There’s a new Clough in charge, young Nigel, tasked with cutting the wagebill while delivering mid-table Championship mediocrity – it’s not a recipe for excitement although briefly, earlier this season, we found ourselves playing some of the best football for years. Could next season see a promotion charge? Might Clough Jnr take the Rams in the same direction as his father? Right now it seems far from likely, but success in football’s so much about confidence and momentum. Whoever we support, we know it doesn’t take much to spark our enthusiasm and what’s great is that things can change so quickly from one season to the next – from one game to the next. So, come next August, we can all believe again, however mad it might appear now.

I write books about a boy called Johnny Mackintosh (and his sister Clara). They’re really science fiction adventures, so you might wonder what I'm doing on this blog, but there’s a lot of football in all the stories. On the very first page of my very first book, Johnny Mackintosh and the Spirit of London, we meet Johnny in his school football kit – white shirts and black shorts that just happen to mirror Derby’s. Early in the second book we even visit the site of the now demolished Baseball Ground. And Johnny plays matches in all the books.

As well as being a fan all my life, I captained my school and university teams and I want the football in my stories to read as authentically as possible. I love this blog and can’t wait to write some bits and pieces for it. For those of you still with things to play for at this the business end of the season: (a) you’re lucky and (b) I hope it goes well for you.

You can read more about me at http://www.keithmansfield.co.uk/.