A strong cold wind which blew diagonally across the pitch didn't help nor did a series of handling errors.

The best chance came half way through the first half after Paul Moss created an overlap for Colin Cheslin to send in Mark Tones at the corner. The winger was over the line but dropped the ball as he was tackled.

It was his firstt game of the season so perhaps the mistakle was understandable but it might have proved costly as Sunderland finally got into the Stags half with ten minutes to go and exerted some pressure near the line. Fortunately a penaltry got the Stags out of trouble.

They were down to 14 men at this point after Henry Tones lasted just five minutes of his comeback. He'd come o9ff the bench but was sin binned for taking exception to something which Sunderland's ascerbic skipper had done.

The same player had been involved in the first half when Jordan Baggs was unlucky to be the only player yellow cardeed after an altercation on the West 22.

Paul Moss narrowly missed another couple of penalties and a drop goal also sailed narrowly. His kicking out of hand was a bonus for the watching first team coaches as was the display of Ryan Phillips at prop and the strength and intelligent running of Paul Miller at inside centre after his long lay offs with injury.