After a summer shoulder operation and belated return to full training, Danny Brown marked only his third appearance of the season with a tremendous volley to give the U's the half-time lead at Mansfield on Saturday.

"The goal has always been in there, I just had to find it," beamed the U's midfielder. "We've been doing a lot of technique work on crossing, shooting and particularly volleys, and because we'd been really working hard on it on Friday it was the first thing that came into my head."

Danny's strike followed a flick-on from Phil Bolland and he paid credit to the big defender: "He has such a presence on the near post that if he doesn't get a knock on then they will have to really push themselves to get the ball out, and if that drops to us on the edge of the area it's all the better for us.

"I had a previous manager who was always banging on about was drop zones and drop balls so it comes like second nature to me to get into the position I found myself in to score."

But he felt United could have come away with all three points and pointed to a key spell just after half-time when Mansfield took advantage: "It was good to get the goal but the result was a real disappointment. We lost the game over a period of ten to fifteen minutes at the start of the second half.

"There were a lot of free kicks in and around our box, and we failed to get going and put ourselves under a lot of pressure and it was a backs against the wall situation.

"We don't feel as though it was a free kick that led to the goal and the lad who scored fouled Hats when he scored. But after they scored we got back into it and caused them more problems that they did to us. We all did our jobs out there apart from that ten or so minutes at the start of the second half.

"We've got to get that right starting on Tuesday, and start picking up the points that are on offer. We are playing decent stuff but you can see as a team we are still finding our feet. You can see the transition from 'total football' to a happy medium you need in this league, and once we get there we will be all right."

Interview by David Gray

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