The Stags have now lost just once in 13 league games and finish the campaign with matches at Peterborough on Tuesday and at home to promoted Cardiff on the final day.

Lucas Akins, a Murray Wallace own goal, Regan Hendry and Oliver Irow helped Mansfield ease past Huddersfield, for whom Marcus Harness responded.

Garner said: “I don’t know if there are some people out there who had a bit of money on it, but winning away at Stockport and then Huddersfield – it’s not a bad double, that.

“It’s fantastic. Those results have come on the road, and the thing is you go to Stockport or Huddersfield, and their pitches are absolutely beautiful, so we have played our best stuff on really good pitches.

“We have just said it to the players in the dressing room: we’re building towards next season and we want to get as many points as we can. It’s as simple as that.

“We’re going to try and get three points of Peterborough, and we’re going to try and get three points against Cardiff. We want to finish as high as possible with as many points as we possibly can come the end of the season.

“The gaff is very good at keeping them focused like that. I think they listen when he says something or he shouts at him a little bit.

“Let’s make sure we’re right for those games and make sure they work 100% as hard as they possibly can to get results.”

Huddersfield’s co-interim head coach Jon Stead was left grim-faced after their unbeaten home league run was stopped at 15 games.

He said: “I’m surprised by the performance, I’ll be honest, because it wasn’t what I was expecting.

“Mansfield were obviously doing what we expected. We knew what the game was going to look like, and I think we’ve probably said that across every game we’ve played in our time, so there were no surprises there.

“We’d prepped all week around second balls, we’d looked at their runs forward, we’d looked at keeping them on the outsides, we looked at their threats, and nothing was any different to what we had prepared for.

“We needed to compete to then put the game on our terms, and I think you saw from the first minute, we didn’t do that, we didn’t compete. That’s where the disappointment and the frustration comes from.”

The stadium was mostly empty by the end, and Stead could not blame the fans leaving early rather than stick around to applaud the players after their final home game.

He added: “I feel sorry they’ve had to endure this season, and it would have been nice to have seen out the season here with a performance despite having missed out on the play-offs.”