Owen Mason

A look at some of the best players I’ve seen in the past few years at either U18s or U23s level or currently playing in non-league who've either left a really positive impression or whose careers I follow with genuine interest to see how they're doing every week.

Player: Owen Mason

Age: 18

Position: Goalkeeper

Club: Mansfield Town

Cast your mind back exactly a month ago!

It's Saturday 7th May and the final day of the National League North season where Farsley Celtic, Guiseley or AFC Telford United are in danger of filling the division's one relegation place.

All three face difficult games against opponents harbouring Play-Off aspirations and for Owen Mason, he's the goalkeeper for Guiseley in what is the final game of his loan spell from Mansfield Town.

Five days earlier, his heroics in a 1-0 win over Spennymoor earned him individual recognition via a place in the National League North ‘Team Of The Week’.

Owen Mason being Owen Mason by expressing loads of emotion and loving life!
(Photo: Guiseley AFC).

Owen's shot-stopping ability is something which I'm already familiar with after his display in an U18s game for Mansfield against Doncaster a year earlier where he kept out attempt after attempt to leave everyone talking about him afterwards. It was the best goalkeeping display that I've seen at Youth Alliance level for a long time with just the very odd comparable exception.

Guiseley's last game is away to Alfreton Town but with less than five minutes to go they're 1-0 up and edging towards safety with Farsley Celtic going in the opposite direction.

Then things change. An Alfreton player converts to make it 1-1 and now Guiseley need to score; instead the Reds bag again deep into injury-time and the dawning realisation very quickly becomes a reality as the final whistle goes. That’s it. The season is over. Guiseley are relegated.

Dejected, despondent and gutted, no doubt wondering what he could have done differently in the game itself, Owen will remember that experience of sitting head in hands on the North Street pitch afterwards for years to come.

But now the dust has settled, he'll also be able to reflect on a season where he excelled.

And it's a season where I've followed his progress because of that youth team game in March 2021 where he saved everything and was freakishly good.

Having featured for Mansfield last pre-season (against Matlock), signed a pro contract, plus having had speculation linking him with a possible move to Nottingham Forest at one point, the highlight of the past 12 months for Owen was probably receiving an international call-up for Republic Of Ireland's U18s. 

He made his ROI debut in Hungary last August and has been involved in many training camps and games since - even as recently as a friendly against Iceland in the Spanish sunshine only last week.

Owen Mason on his international debut for Ireland's U18s last summer (Photo: Unknown).

But it's domestically, at Guiseley, where his character has been best highlighted considering he racked up 27 appearances (keeping seven clean-sheets) in the National League North and I'd be hard pushed to think of too many ‘keepers who have done the same at his age. He only turned 18 in March and his initial scholarship contract at Mansfield still has just over three weeks to run. He could have been playing youth team football but he's already 'done it' in a first team environment.

A quick glance through his Twitter page shows plenty of photos where he's fist pumping, roaring like a lion (quite apt for Guiseley) and filled with loads of emotion. It proves that he loved every minute of that loan, and it should offer an insight into the type of character he is and the mindset, drive, desire, determination and confidence which he possesses. He's got some good character traits.

The loan obviously didn't end the way he wanted it to with relegation but I've got tons of respect for any lad who plays men's football at such a young age. It helps so much in realising what's needed to forge a career. There's no substitute for it. It's infectious. It's reality and he should be proud of how he showed ‘bottle’ (in more ways than one) and threw himself head on into that challenge in the first instance - even if it cost him the price of a green base-layer just before Christmas and a new water bottle around his birthday!

All of this is why, in my view, he's Mansfield's best academy prospect right now and irrespective of how things pan out, he deserves recognition for what he's achieved in the past year.

Since Mansfield's academy reformed in 2011, not one 'keeper has progressed from the youth set-up to play in a competitive first team fixture. Those before him have sometimes got close; Adam Bishop was named on the bench a couple of times in 2014/15 and Sam Wilson signed a professional deal a few years later, but neither of them actually pulled on the gloves on a first team matchday and walked out to the ‘On The Ball’ theme at Field Mill to defend the Stags' honour.

That ought to be Owen’s next task and I'd like to think once people watch him perform, they'll realise the ability and characteristics he possesses to carve out a reasonable career in the game.

Good luck to him!