Former Watford and current Notts County midfielder made his Boro debut on Saturday

Gavin Mahon says extending his playing career in the Football League into next season is one of the factors that saw him sign on loan at Stevenage last week.

The midfielder started his first game for Boro in Saturday’s defeat at Shrewsbury Town, and the former Watford man, who has a house in St Albans, said that although Notts County boss Chris Kiwomya wanted him to remain at Meadow Lane until his contract ran out in the summer, he needed as much game time between now and then in a bid to play on next year.

“At the end of the day Chris Kiwomya didn’t want me to leave,” Mahon told the Comet.

“Even though I wasn’t playing every week he said ‘I want you to stay because you’re experienced’, but I knew that if I wanted to play on next season I needed to play some football somewhere and thankfully Gary [Smith] gave me the opportunity to come here.

“I came down here and hopefully I can get some minutes under my belt. That was probably the second 90 minutes in three or four months I’ve played.”

After an initial 28 days, Notts County will be able to recall Mahon at 24 hours’ notice, but if Saturday’s performance is indicative of what the former Watford player can offer then Boro will hope that their League 1 rivals do not come knocking.

Mahon kept things simple in the middle of the pitch, and the 36-year-old thought he may even have had a good shout for a penalty late in the game only for the referee to decide a foul on him took place an inch or two outside of the box.

It was the second penalty shout of the match for Stevenage, with Steve Beleck’s earlier claims also being brushed away.

“I thought my one was close,” Mahon said. “I may have been half a yard in the box.

“The other one I thought was a definite penalty, but you don’t get them away from home when things aren’t going well for you do you?

“I’ve played the game long enough to know that. It wasn’t our day.”

Mahon added: “I think you’ve got to be careful you don’t get sucked into thinking about the negatives.

“At the end of the day we have to pick ourselves up because we’ve got a game on Tuesday.

“I think the gaffer was more pleased with the performance than he was in the week. We take the positives out of the game, and I think there were a lot of positives, and we take that into the Scunny game [on Tuesday evening].”