Murray hands over man of the match champagne to Palmer

Although Palmer missed a chance to win a tense derby at the death, Murray said he felt Palmer and strike partner Matt Rhead were the best Stags players on the pitch.

Youngster Palmer was genuinely touched by the gesture by his assistant manager and said: “They are really kind words from Adam and I appreciate them a lot. It just didn’t drop for us today.

“The fans were amazing today and it was one of the best days of my life.

“I had that chance at the end, but it just wasn’t meant to be.

“I was pretty calm and I took it down on my chest. I did everything right but the finish went just a whisker wide.

“I thought today was a fantastic team effort and we were very unfortunate not to take all three points in the end. We made Chesterfield look am average side and the boys put a fantastic shift in today.

“I don’t want to run before I can walk. But I am starting to find my feet now. I know it has taken a bit of time to get up to scratch.

“We will stay positive after performances like that, keep fighting and keep trying our best to pick up the points.

“If you’d said before the start of the season that we’d have picked up four points off Chesterfield, fans would have taken that.”

Murray added: “I didn’t think I was the best, I thought the front boys deserved man of the match as they were both different class today.

“They are massive games and when you go up to the sponsors’ suite, you see what it means to people. What we do out there dictates people’s weekends.

“After the first half we came in to a bit of a rollicking from the gaffer as he expects more of us than that.

“We perhaps showed them a bit too much respect. But in the second half we got on top and feel we should have got all three points.

“We didn’t take our chances and that’s the story of our season. But we can’t dwell on that. We must stay in the League and address that in the summer.

“There is no time to feel tired as we have another massive game on Tuesday.”

He added: “The atmosphere was brilliant today. We gave the fans something to cheer and it makes all the difference.

“They could see the boys all gave 110 per cent today and the fans appreciated that.

“We played against the wind in the first half and it changed at half-time and we ended up playing 90 minutes against it!”