'We're going to Wembley' - Tony Lormor and Jamie Hewitt tell story of Chesterfield's famous play-off win against Mansfield Town 25 years on

Here, Jamie Hewitt and Tony Lormor talk us through what they can remember about the two-legged tie...

The Blues had been on fire in the second half of the 1994/95 season with a 21-match unbeaten run from Boxing Day to early May. It is a record that no Chesterfield side has matched in the last 25 years. Unfortunately, it came to an end in the penultimate game of the season against Carlisle United which scuppered their automatic promotion hopes. If they were to go up they would have to do it the hard way. Through the play-offs. Against their fiercest rivals, Mansfield.

The Stags had beaten them twice in the league and were winning plaudits for the amount of goals they were scoring. The Spireites, meanwhile, were feeling a bit down after missing out on a place in the top two. They knew they were in for a couple of tough games. But their defeat to Mansfield on December 18 that season was followed by that incredible unbeaten run so they were a dangerous animal themselves and a tough nut to crack.

Nobody understood the rivalry with the Stags more than Chesterfield-born and lifelong Town fan Hewitt.

“We had just missed out on automatic promotion so we felt a bit deflated,” he told the DT. “I think that showed in the last league game when we had to come from behind to get a draw against Colchester. It made the Mansfield game even more tense because we didn’t want to let the fans down.”

The defeat to Carlisle in the penultimate match of the regular season was the first time new signing Lormor, who missed a penalty in the game, had experienced defeat in a Chesterfield shirt. The forward made his Blues debut on Boxing Day in the win against Doncaster Rovers which was the start of their 21-match undefeated streak.

“It was all down to me,” he joked.

Hewitt and Lomor both have similar accounts of the first leg at Field Mill. It was a tight, tense affair. Phil Robinson’s excellent solo goal for the Spireites on 64 minutes was soon cancelled out by Stewart Hadley’s strike eight minutes later.

“We finished about 15 points ahead of Mansfield in the league and I always remember going into the game feeling like the underdog because everyone was going on about how many goals they had scored,” Lormor said.

“I remember feeling they were on top for a lot of the game. Then when Robbo scored - he literally ran from the halfway line on his own - I couldn’t catch him - and I remember getting that goal and thinking ‘jesus, we needed that’.

“Them getting the equaliser was probably fair. If I am being honest they were probably the better team so to walk away from that 1-1 I thought we did quite well and we were lucky to a certain extent.”

Hewitt admitted it was two teams desperate not to lose. He said: “The only problem was that it was three games without a win for us so that did put a doubt in your mind. We gave ourselves a chance but it was not a given against a decent Mansfield side at the time.”

And so with the tie evenly balanced, the two teams battled it out under the lights at a packed and noisy Saltergate three days later in the second leg.

Manager John Duncan was meticulous in his planning, as always, Lormor and Hewitt explained, and they had been warned by assistant boss Kevin Randall that Paul Holland and Mansfield were dangerous from set-pieces.

“I remember we did a session on defending corners and free-kicks and Duncan said Paul Holland was their dangerman from every free-kick and corner that they got and I remember going through it and through it,” Lormor said. “As a team we had to block Paul off and not give him a free run. We worked a long, long time on it.”

“Kev Randall did say before the game ‘look, watch Holland he is good in the air’, added Hewitt.

Within three minutes Holland gave the visitors the lead with a header from a free-kick.

“It was a terrible start from us,” Hewitt, who made more than 500 appearances for the club, admitted.

But they weren’t behind for long. Lormor hit back with a swivel and finish inside the box.

“The two goals I am probably most remembered for are the Walsall goal and the one against Mansfield,” the striker said. “It is strange because both goals came about because I miscontrolled the ball.

“I remember Andy Beasley took a free-kick, the big man (Andy Morris) flicked it on and I had a defender on my back. I went to control it and drop it in front of me because I was never one for trying to turn a player - I was never that quick - so my job was to hold it up and get in the box. The ball bounced off me and it went over my left shoulder which surprised me and surprised the defender and just gave me that half a yard and when it sat up I just thought ‘bang, I’m hitting this’ and I caught it clean and it went flying in.”

Captain Nicky Law, who blamed himself for the first Mansfield goal, was then at fault again as Steve Wilkinson took advantage of a mix-up at the back to put the visitors ahead for a second time before the break.

Despite being behind there was still an air of confidence in the Chesterfield dressing room that they would get back level. Duncan, by all accounts, was very calm.

Lormor, now 49, recalls: “John had Kev had this quite unique thing where they would leave us alone for five minutes. And in that five minutes the players would usually sort themselves out and by the time John and Kev came in we were all fairly well settled.”

Law, meanwhile, was annoyed at his own performance.

“Nicky was understandably upset with himself but Kev took him to one side and out of the dressing room and had a chat with him in the medical room,” Hewitt told the DT. “We did not know what he was saying until years down the line when it came out that he had said ‘look, don’t worry about that, mistakes happen, you will win this game for us’.”

And as we know, he did.

First, Jonathan Howard equalised to make it 2-2.

Lormor laughed: “We got back to 2-2 and I think we were defending a corner. I came back and Nicky said something like ‘get back up front, we’ve only got a few minutes and we will go out on away goals’. And I said to him ‘no away goals don’t count’. I remember thinking ‘I bloody hope that’s right!’”

After Lormor’s missed penalty at Carlisle, Duncan told him to never take a spot-kick again, the forward revealed. However, he did take one in the following match against Colchester because Law had been rested for the play-offs.

As the game went into extra-time, with Mansfield down to 10 men, Law’s moment of redemption came. Penalty to Chesterfield. There was no way Law was going to let Lormor take this one.

“I remember the penalty and looking at Nicky and he looked at me and sort of went ‘bugger off you’re not taking this one’,” Lormor said. “I would have been surprised if Nicky had chucked the ball at me and said ‘stick it away’. I am not quite sure what I would have done!”

Hewitt, meanwhile, had no doubts that Law would slot it away.

He explained: “Nicky practised penalties every day and in a pressure situation you would not want anybody else taking it. Nicky used to put cones in the net about a yard in from the posts and try to slot them inside the cones every time. I think his penalty that night would have gone inside the cone. He put it in the corner and I think at 3-2 that was it really. “

Hero Law trebled his season’s tally with another goal, this time a header from a corner in what had been a truly remarkable game for him personally.

Howard grabbed his second and Chesterfield’s fifth as Mansfield finished with nine men.

The bragging rights and a place in the Division Three play-off final at Wembley belonged to Chesterfield.

The pair don’t remember there being much partying after the game. Hewitt, celebrating his 27th birthday, went back home with his family. While Lormor returned to his Lincoln base.

“It looked an easier scoreline than what it probably was,” Hewitt admitted.

“I think we knew we had only done half the job because if you go to Wembley and lose the beating Mansfield is fairly irrelevant,” Lormor added.

*Read more memories from Lormor and Hewitt when we take a look back at the final against Bury in a couple of weeks’ time.