Gannin’ along the St James’s pitch to get the game abandoned…

 

Newcastle United 4 Forest 3

FA Cup 6^th Round, St James's Park, Saturday 9th March 1974, 52,551

 

Allan Brown’s tenure as Forest manager is mainly recalled by Reds fans these days in terms of his sacking paving the way for the arrival of Brian Clough. While his time in charge is generally viewed as uninspiring, it is perhaps a little harsh that he is sometimes prominent in lists of the worst ever Forest managers, especially given how competitive that particular field is. While he never looked like taking us back up into the top flight, he led us to the fringes of the promotion race and, as has been mentioned elsewhere in these pages, the first proper cup run of my time as a supporter. The week after thrashing Manchester City we had handed out a 5-1 hiding to Jack Charlton’s Middlesbrough team, who would finish the season as Division Two champions by a runaway 15-point margin, so the Brown era wasn’t without its memorable moments. 

Now Brown’s men had overcome Portsmouth in a tense 5^th Round tie and earned themselves a trip to St James’s Park in the quarter-final. Until this campaign our lack of progress in the FA Cup meant that the famous 1967 quarter-final win against Everton was my reference point when it came to success in the competition, even though I hadn’t been there myself. Now we could once again allow ourselves a rare dream of cup glory.

 

While Newcastle were clearly hot favourites to clinch a place in the last four, their neighbours Sunderland had been in the Second Division when they won the Cup the previous season, so why couldn’t we emulate them? These days, the tie would be described as a “free hit” for the team from the lower division. At the time the talk was probably more of having “nothing to lose” and the Cup being “a great leveller”. Either way, we’d have the freedom to go out and play with no pressure on us and there’d be no significant consequences if we lost. Or so we thought…

 

A huge Reds following - usually estimated at between 12,000 and 14,000 in a crowd of more than 52,000 – headed up the A1 for what was billed in the press as the Battle of the Supermacs. The powerful and pacey Malcolm Macdonald was the latest in the long line of number nines hero-worshipped on Tyneside, while the skilful if unpredictable Duncan McKenzie was having a prolific season for Forest. There was never any question of the three of us being part of the Red invasion of Newcastle, so Dad, Robin and I would have to follow the action on Radio Nottingham.

 

These were the days before full match commentaries, so fans had to make do with live reports every ten minutes or so, hoping all the while that the music played in between would be interrupted by the tantalising announcement that there was “goal action at…” one of the grounds the three Nottinghamshire teams were playing at. The Forest correspondent in those days was probably Mick Wormald, who formed a triumvirate of familiar voices with Colin “Mr Notts County” Slater, who would cover Notts for several more decades, and Stan Searl at Mansfield, another long-serving reporter, who sounded like your great grandad but would have only been in his fifties then.

 

Given how excited I’d been at the prospect of the tie in the days leading up to it, it seems hard to imagine that I almost forgot about it on the day. Ten-year-old boys aren’t known for the length of their attention span at the best of times, but if there was one activity in particular that could cause all concept of time to disappear it was playing football on the street. Fortunately, I suddenly remembered the game, hastily made my excuses to the neighbouring kids and rushed indoors at almost exactly the moment Ian Bowyer gave us a second minute lead. Thanks to YouTube, we can take up the story through ITV’s coverage of the game, which we would have seen the next day, still scarcely believing what had happened.

 

First of all, for those who care about such things, Forest are wearing the right socks. This is the season in which, apparently influenced by Manchester United, our socks are black, an abomination every bit as pointless, unwanted and un-Forest as the black bits that would be inflicted on a couple of our mid-90s shirts. But because Newcastle’s socks are – more reasonably - black, on this occasion ours are red and thus complement rather than clash with our blood-red shirts (bare apart from the now-famous tree badge, which was introduced earlier in the season) and plain white shorts. The crowd are packed tightly into St James’s Park and, as is apparent from the mix of red-and-white and black-and-white scarves visible on the open Gallowgate End terrace behind Jim Barron, there is no segregation.

 

Liam O’Kane (referred to throughout as “Billy” by commentator Hugh Johns for no obvious reason) launches the attack down the right. Martin O’Neill lofts a hopeful ball into the Newcastle box, keeper Iam McFaul and a covering defender both hesitate, leaving Bowyer to head past McFaul when he finally leaves his line. On 26 minutes, Tommy Craig equalises with a left-foot shot from ten yards after Forest fail to deal with a corner and Newcastle briefly look threatening. But soon Forest take over and, when Duncan McKenzie is chopped by Bobby Moncur on the edge of the penalty area, the free-kick is tapped to Bowyer, whose shot forces McFaul into a sprawling save. Then, two minutes before the break, a glorious flowing one- and two-touch move involving John Winfield, George Lyall, Neil Martin and John Robertson ends with Lyall dispossessed in the area at the expense of a corner. Lyall takes it from the left, McKenzie’s headed flick from the near post causes panic in the home defence and the ball is only half-cleared. “Billy” O’Kane has never scored a first-team goal, but for some reason the Reds’ right back is on hand 12 yards out to smash a left-footed drive into the roof the net.

 

The second half highlights begin with Bowyer nodding on Robertson’s lofted ball, Moncur mis-hitting the ball into the area and Pat Howard clumsily barging McKenzie over from behind for as obvious a penalty as you will ever see. McKenzie is clearly confident in Lyall’s ability from the spot as he immediately raises an arm and smiles as if celebrating a goal, but the kick is delayed by Howard haranguing referee Gordon Kew. He talks himself into a booking, but doesn’t stop there, continuing his tirade despite the efforts of future Reds legend Frank Clark to calm him down. Either the continual torrent of abuse or the language used is too much for referee Kew, who sends Howard off. Remarkably, in a show of sportsmanship that was rare then and would be un-heard of now, Martin appears to appeal for Kew to reconsider his decision, but Kew points the way to the dressing room and Howard finally departs.

 

McKenzie’s faith is rewarded as Lyall fires the penalty beyond McFaul into the corner of the net. A good half of the crowd on the terrace behind McFaul erupts in celebration and Lyall escapes the hugs of his team-mates to blow a kiss towards them. We are now in total control - 3-1 up against ten men with just over half an hour to play. A single disgruntled Newcastle fan is escorted off the pitch, but, as Sammy Chapman blocks a John Tudor shot for a corner, it is apparent that several fans at the Leazes End are on the pitch side of the advertising hoardings. As the corner comes over a missile is seen flying onto the pitch from behind the goal and when the ball is cleared to the touchline it is apparent that some of the home “support” have also seen fit to throw whatever they had to hand onto the pitch.

 

Johns describes police reinforcements hastening to the Leazes End, where he thinks a fight has broken out and as he describes one person running onto the pitch, hundreds of Newcastle followers burst through the flimsy police cordon. Their clear intent is to stop the game and to get at the celebrating Forest fans, and Johns declares, “This is what they wanted to do all the time”, adding, “…a terribly dangerous moment for the players themselves now.” Kew has no alternative but to stop the game and take the players off. As the stunned Forest players leave the pitch, Bowyer appears to be consoling Dave Serella and it is later revealed that Serella was punched by one of the thugs. Not all of the invaders match the football hooligan stereotype – a couple of decidedly rotund middle-aged men are shown being bundled off the pitch.

 

After ten minutes the situation is deemed to have calmed sufficiently for the game to continue, manager Brown agreeing to the resumption perhaps in fear of the consequences of refusing. Forest’s momentum has gone and our players are understandably apprehensive, no doubt fearful of further incursions if the game continues to go their way. In the tense, crackling atmosphere Newcastle have nothing to lose and go on the attack. Terry Hibbitt swings in a corner, Barron claims the ball comfortably and Kew awards a penalty. “Well, there’s a turn-up for the book!”, exclaims Johns, before suggesting, not altogether convincingly, that the spot kick has been awarded for a push by Chapman. There is no appeal from the Newcastle players and Chapman is not the only Reds player to look utterly bemused.

 

Terry McDermott sends Barron the wrong way and suddenly the result is in doubt, with the margin now a single goal and a little over twenty minutes to play. Now Newcastle are breaking with the kind of speed and purpose Forest had shown before the pitch invasion. Hibbitt beats Lyall, finds space on the left and crosses for the unmarked Tudor to equalise with a brilliant diving header. A few fans are on the pitch again, this time celebrating with the players. It is almost inevitable that the Geordies will score again and, with a minute to play, they do. Tudor drives a cross-shot in from the right and Macdonald heads the ball across the six yard line for Moncur to volley home. The final whistle goes and both sets of players sprint off as, yet again, hundreds of fans come onto the pitch.

 

 

Even at the age of ten I fully understood that this wasn’t the usual “we wuz robbed” game, where a dodgy decision or two would cost your team a game, but within a couple of days you’d all but forgotten about it and in the next match your team might get the benefit of someone else’s being robbed. This was one that would live long in the memory, be recalled in discussions of great footballing (well, Forest) injustices and create a strong lifelong aversion to the club that benefited from the hooliganism of its fans and the incompetence of the football authorities. It would be naïve to pretend the more meatheaded of our own fans would have been entirely innocent in the numerous skirmishes that apparently broke out in and around St James’s Park that day. But outbreaks of violence among idiots attaching themselves to football clubs were common in those days. Invading the pitch by the hundred to get a game stopped was something altogether different.

 

Unsurprisingly, Forest appealed against the result being allowed to stand, the Geordies’ comeback clearly having only occurred as a result of the pitch invasion having unsettled our players and fired up Newcastle’s. The FA duly launched an inquiry and we awaited their decision, keen to discover how Newcastle would be punished for the outrageous behaviour of a significant number of their followers. Would they be thrown out of the competition? Heavily fined? Made to play a number of matches behind closed doors? No, but they would jolly well have to replay the match. Not the last thirty minutes, starting with the score at 3-1 to Forest. The whole match, starting at 0-0. There - that would teach them a lesson…

 

Astonishingly, a lot of people in the north-east thought (and some still do) that this was an unfair decision, as if Newcastle had won the tie fairly and squarely with no outside influence affecting the outcome. Regardless of the lack of punishment for the club “supported” by the hundreds of pitch invaders, this was harsh on Forest, as we certainly had a case for having the tie awarded in our favour, but at least a replay would mean we had home advantage. Or so we thought. But, unbelievably, the FA announced that this replay would be held at a neutral ground, Everton’s Goodison Park. Apparently, this was in case Forest fans chose to take similar action if we were to find ourselves losing. By this logic, if you’re ever unfortunate enough to be mugged you can presumably be expected to be arrested alongside your assailant, on the off-chance that you might mug him in return.

 

So, nine days later, a crowd of 40,000 headed to Goodison Park, where the teams played out a tense goalless draw. Now, at last, Forest would get a chance to see justice done with a win on home turf. But no – incredibly, the FA hadn’t yet finished punishing Forest for the Newcastle fans’ behaviour and decreed that the third game would also be at Goodison Park, three days later.

 

This time, fewer supporters were able to get the time off from work (or play nick from school), but the game still attracted more than 31,000. When Newcastle opened the scoring with a typical burst down the middle and finish from Macdonald, it proved to be the only goal of the game, but only because yet another unfathomable decision went against Forest. Bowyer fired home a free kick from just outside the box, but the goal was ruled out because Paul Richardson had made a dummy run over the ball before Bowyer played it. In other words, he did what countless players have done before and since without anybody batting an eyelid, but on this occasion he was punished for “ungentlemanly conduct”. Newcastle, of course, had not been punished for the considerably less than gentlemanly conduct of their fans. Now it was our fans' turn to see their team losing in an important cup tie and on the wrong side of a refereeing decision, but somehow it didn't occur to them to invade the pitch and stop the game, despite the recent precedent of the FA favouring a team if their fans did just that.

 

There was much speculation as to why Newcastle got off so lightly, but it was not lost on Forest fans that the Newcastle chairman was Lord Westwood, who had been made President of the Football League that year and would go on to be vice-chairman of the FA. He might or might not have had some influence on the decision, but you’d be hard pressed to find a Reds supporter of the time who didn’t believe his presence among the game’s senior administrators played a part in the FA’s spineless refusal to take meaningful action against his club.

 

By way of comparison, a few weeks later, when Denis Law’s famous back-heeled goal in the Manchester derby went a long way to confirming Manchester United’s relegation, large numbers of United followers invaded the pitch and got the game stopped. The players were duly taken off, but the game never restarted – and the 2-0 scoreline was subsequently allowed to stand. I never heard an explanation as to why the authorities punished one club but not another for exactly the same offence, so I can only assume that no Manchester United officials were highly enough placed in the game’s governing bodies to have an influence on the decision.

 

So our cup adventure was over in the most controversial of circumstances, but our interest in the competition was far from over. Thanks to two Macdonald goals Newcastle beat Burnley in the semi-final to earn a Wembley date with Liverpool, so the majority of football fans in Nottingham became ardent Liverpool fans for the day. To our relief and delight, two-goal Kevin Keegan inspired his team (including former Red Peter Cormack) to a 3-0 thumping in a final so one-sided you might say Newcastle were lucky to get nil. With the momentum of our cup run and the scintillating form of McKenzie in arguably the best season of his career, we would have fancied ourselves to beat Burnley. Then, in all honesty, we too would have been no match for Liverpool, but at least we would have had our day in the sun.

 

The whole farce was, of course, not the fault of Newcastle United as a club, but it engendered a strong dislike of them that lasts to this day among a large portion of the Forest fan base. Perhaps their reputation was restored a little when thousands of Geordies came to support Stuart Pearce’s testimonial against Keegan’s side in May 1996 (to his credit, Keegan impressed upon his players that they should not consider their season finished until they had paid tribute to Psycho). But these feelings die hard in football folk and whenever we’re told what passionate, loyal supporters Newcastle have Reds fans are taken right back to the injustices of 1974. Little did we know that just four years later they would be relegated while we ran away with the League championship.

 

So Forest added yet another first to our long list of distinctions, becoming the first club to play the same opponents three times in a cup tie without playing at home.* But historical curiosities were the last thing on our minds at the time. Sometimes you just know that you’re not destined to win and all you’re left with is a moral victory - and an entry for your own personal collection of "we wuz robbed" moments.

9th March:

Forest: Barron, O’Kane, Winfield, Chapman, Serella, Robertson, McKenzie, Lyall, Martin, O’Neill, Bowyer.

Newcastle: McFaul, Craig (Kennedy), Clark, McDermott, Howard, Moncur, Barrowclough, Smith, Macdonald, Tudor, Hibbitt.

 

 

18th March:

Forest: Barron, O’Kane, Winfield, Chapman, Serella, Richardson, McKenzie, Lyall, Martin, Robertson, Bowyer.

Newcastle: McFaul, Clark, Kennedy, McDermott, Howard, Moncur, Barrowclough, Smith, Macdonald, Tudor, Hibbitt.

 

 

21st March:

Forest: Barron, O’Kane, Winfield, Chapman, Serella, Richardson, McKenzie, Lyall, Martin, O’Neill, Bowyer.

Newcastle: McFaul, Craig, Kennedy, McDermott, Clark, Moncur, Cassidy, Smith, Macdonald, Tudor, Hibbitt.

 

* Curiously, in 1921 we had also contrived to play two Cup ties against Newcastle without setting foot on the City Ground turf. We were short of money so, having been drawn at home to the Geordies in the 3rd round, we sold the ground rights for a four-figure sum. We drew 1-1 and, as we had been nominally still been the home team, we had to travel back up to the north-east for the replay, which we lost 2-0.

 

Born is the king of City Ground!

 

 

Forest 4 Manchester City 1

 

FA Cup 4^th Round, City Ground, Saturday 27^th January 1974, 41,472

 

  

 

Since I made my Forest-supporting debut some time in the 1967-68 season, it had been apparent that cup runs were something other teams had. Our League form was inconsistent at best and poor at worst, as we gradually declined towards relegation in 1972. Teams in this position often get brief respite from their league struggles with an unexpected cup run or a one-off success against a bigger team, but there was no such consolation for us. From my limited experience of these things at the time, losing cup ties to teams from lower divisions seemed to be almost accepted as part and parcel of life as a Forest fan.

 

By 1973-74, my sixth season as a match-goer, we had only progressed beyond the 4^th Round of the FA Cup once and had lost to Second Division teams three times. We had scarcely fared better in the League Cup, twice going out to clubs from lower divisions. That trend had looked set to continue in a topsy-turvy game against Third Division Bristol Rovers in the 3^rd Round of the FA Cup. Having gone two goals up early in the game, we had found ourselves behind before a penalty and a late winner spared our blushes. The Rovers match had been one of the first professional games to be played on a Sunday. In a winter blighted by the international oil crisis and a miners’ strike, the government had imposed a three-day working week to save energy, under which the Saturday had been designated a working day for Nottingham. This would have seriously affected the crowd for what in those days was still a big day in the football calendar and Forest were given permission to put the game back 24 hours. They were rewarded with a crowd of well over 23,000, the biggest at the City Ground since our relegation, and several thousand more than might have been expected on a Saturday.

 

The success of that game, despite the misgivings of those opposed to Sunday football, encouraged Forest to repeat the experiment for the visit of City in the fourth round. To get round the Sunday trading laws in force at the time, the club stipulated that admission to the game would be “by official team sheet only”. The team sheet would cost the appropriate amount for each part of the ground, so £1 for all seats, 45p for the terraces in front of the Main and East stands, and 40p to stand behind the goal.

 

 

Our average attendance for League games in 1973-74 was 14,000, but on the day it was apparent that those team sheets had sold in huge numbers. Secretary Ken Smales, usually unduly optimistic when it came to forecasting attendances for our games, had expected 36,000, but the visit of a City side including Colin Bell, Mike Summerbee, Francis Lee and Rodney Marsh attracted almost three times the average crowd, a tremendous turnout considering the economic state of the country. It was our biggest crowd since the Boxing Day meeting with Arsenal just over two years previously. On that occasion, still fondly remembered for Ian Storey-Moore’s remarkable solo goal, a number of young fans watched the game from the pitch side of the wall in front of the East Stand terrace. This time, dozens of youngsters sat pitch-side in front of the Main Stand. As Dad, Robin and I approached the ground along Pavilion Road – with kick-off still more than half an hour away – I had been struck by the sight of fans packed so tightly on the visible part of the Bridgford End you could scarcely put the proverbial cigarette paper between them, so it was no wonder they had moved – or been moved – to get a better view and avoid being crushed.

It was hard to gauge the size of the travelling support and the figures estimated since in various books and online recollections are unhelpfully inconsistent, ranging from a couple of hundred to five thousand. Some of those accounts tell of serious crowd trouble in the vicinity of the ground and skirmishes on the terraces. There were even rumours of the odd City fan being deposited into the River Trent, a not infrequent claim in the 70s, but one for which there was almost never evidence. In those days hooliganism was, of course, rife, but I don’t recall seeing any violence on our way to or from the game. Maybe we happened to miss the worst of it, maybe we were so inured to it that we witnessed something without it particularly registering with us. However many they numbered, the visiting fans were mainly over to our right, somewhere in the corner of the Bridgford End and the Main Stand, but little was heard from them, apart from the bell that City super-fan Helen Turner famously wielded at all the Sky Blues’ games.

 

Fans and bell alike were even quieter once the game started, though, as Forest tore at City in a flurry of attacks that left them wondering what had hit them. The answer was Duncan McKenzie, who had his finest game in a Forest shirt – and, quite possibly, his career. This was one of those rare occasions when an individual player dominated the play to such an extent that it is remembered ever after as his game. Indeed, John Robertson would later joke that, for all the glories that followed, Reds fans would often prefer to reminisce about what became known, despite Ian Bowyer’s brace against his first club, as McKenzie’s Match.

 

McKenzie was as skilful as any player ever to wear the Garibaldi and his dazzling repertoire of flicks, dummies and nutmegs were enough to make him my second ever favourite player after Storey-Moore. But their effect would be diminished if his team-mates didn’t read them and, like many a maverick before and since, he would sometimes beat himself as he tried one trick too many. For this reason, in his early years his inconsistency had been considered too much of a risk in a struggling side, he had failed to hold down a regular place and he had been packed off on a couple of loans to Mansfield Town. He finally began to fulfil his potential in Dave Mackay’s brief time in charge at the City Ground, when he was encouraged to play his natural game and responded with more confidence and more consistency. By now, even though Mackay had left to replace Brian Clough at Derby County and the underwhelming Allan Brown was in the manager’s office, McKenzie was clearly the team’s star player.

 

He would end the season with 28 goals and numerous assists and in this match in particular, just about everything he tried came off. After 17 minutes, one of his runs down the right wing opened up the City defence and he set up Bowyer to open the scoring, the former Sky Blue celebrating with a gleeful forward roll. Soon afterwards, McKenzie scored the second himself, expertly converting Paul Richardson’s lofted pass with a scissor-kick, but his most memorable contribution to the game was still to come.

 

Before the half-time whistle could give the bewildered City defence – including future Reds hero Colin Barrett - some respite, McKenzie would beat almost all of them single-handedly in one mazy run as he again worked his magic on the right wing. First he eased his way past left-back Willie Donachie, then he nutmegged Tommy Booth, then he left Mike Doyle in his wake, before jinking past another hapless defender (named in some accounts as Tony Towers, though the photo in a subsequent match programme has Barrett looking on in despair). He then squared the ball past keeper Keith McRae, leaving Bowyer with the simplest of tap-ins. There was still time before the break for Bell to fire past Jim Barron, but with the ball bouncing back off the post, City’s best chance of getting back into the game was gone.

 

Forest were never likely to keep up the intensity in the second half and City, stung into playing for a bit of pride if nothing else, had much more of the play. Frank Carrodus gave them a glimmer of hope, heading home Summerbee’s free kick with eighteen minutes remaining. But they had lost Marsh to an ankle injury in the first half and Forest were able to keep them at bay. As the final whistle drew nearer, George Lyall added a fourth to complete the rout, McKenzie the creator for the third time in the game.

 

Our reward was another home tie, again played on a Sunday, with Portsmouth providing opposition from our own division for the first time in this cup run. Another bumper crowd of more than 38,000 would see a game that never lived up to the City game – how could it? Although favourites to win the tie, we were unable to put in another dominant performance and, duly encouraged, the large away following ensured the famous Pompey chimes rang out more frequently than City’s bell had. McKenzie was once again the match-winner, though, converting a disputed penalty in the 58^th minute, after Eoin Hand was judged to have fouled Bowyer.

 

For the first time in my Forest-supporting life, we had reached the quarter-final of one of the cups. Instead of losing meekly to a team from a lower division, we had humbled a team from the division above. After three successive home games, we were finally drawn away to Newcastle United – a tie that would live as long in the memory of Reds fans as McKenzie’s Match against City, but for all the wrong reasons.

 

Forest: Barron, O’Kane, Winfield, Chapman, Cottam, Richardson, McKenzie, Lyall, Martin, Jackson, Bowyer

 

City: McRae, Barrett, Donachie, Doyle, Booth, Towers, Summerbee, Bell, Lee, Carrodus, Marsh (Leman)

So here it is, Merry Christmas...

  

Notts County 0 Forest 1

Division Two, Meadow Lane, Saturday 26^th December 1973, 32,310

 

Three divisions had separated Forest and County at the start of the decade, but by the time the oldest league derby in football was played for the first time since 1957 the clubs, quite literally, could not have been closer. Our relegation in 1972 had coincided with the first of their two promotions in three seasons. They were now 5^th in the table, with us 6^th after beating Bolton the previous Saturday, our first win - at the fourth attempt - under new manager Allan Brown.

 

Back in 1957, more than 32,000 had turned up at the City Ground for the final game of the Division Two season, four days after we had clinched promotion with a 4-0 win at Sheffield United. We had clearly taken our foot off the accelerator, as we somehow contrived to lose 4-2 to a County team that finished 20^th. Fifteen years on and a similar number (double County’s previous highest crowd of the season to date) were attracted by Boxing Day football and the resumption of the battle for local bragging rights. We were among them; Dad would have been to Meadow Lane many a time, but for Robin and me it was our first ever away game, though it was actually a shorter trip than a home game.

 

With the closest professional grounds in England separated by not much more than the width of the Trent and most of the city lying north of the river, Meadow Lane was the nearer of the grounds for us and many other Reds fans. With a large crowd expected we no doubt allowed a bit more time than usual for Dad to get one of his usual parking spots either side of the station on Queen’s Road or Station Street, but it was only once we parked that things felt any different from a home game. Instead of the usual walk to Trent Bridge and the City Ground, we had the shortest of strolls onto London Road and across the canal to the ground. And instead of queuing to buy a programme from our usual seller at the Forest end of the bridge, we had to find one of his counterparts outside Meadow Lane, the official programme being an essential part of the matchday experience for far more supporters than it is in the digital age.

 

Robin and I would have been eager to compare our familiar “Forest Review” with the hitherto unknown “The Magpies” (the name of County’s programme not yet having dropped the ”s”). Doing so now reveals that County fans got 24 pages for their 7p, while we only got 16 for our 6p. However, their pages were smaller, had much more advertising and a lot more white space. Apart from the pen pictures of our players and two pages looking back to that 1956-57 season and reviewing the post-war meetings of the teams, there was very little to detain the reader.  In contrast, our sixteen pages for the return game at the start of March crammed in, amongst other things, four pages on County, a feature on a meeting of the teams in 1919, a full-page reproduction of the line-ups in the programme for a derby in 1923, and a page each devoted to recent match action and the reminiscences of manager Brown. By then, though, Forest had made the unpopular decision to raise the price of the “Forest Review” (unusually in the course of a season) to match County’s 7p. 1973-74 was the season of the energy crisis and three-day week and the resultant inflation had increased the cost of producing the programme. During the winter months some games kicked off early to avoid the need for floodlights and thus save valuable electricity, but over the holiday period clubs were allowed to use them and so the Boxing Day match kept the usual 3pm start.

 

We took our places on the terrace in front of the Main Stand, modest and somewhat outdated compared to its namesake across the Trent. Opposite us, behind an uncovered terrace, was the County Road stand, its gable proudly proclaiming the year (1862) of foundation of what was until 2019 the world’s oldest professional league club. To our right was the small Meadow Lane stand, which had been moved across the river from Trent Bridge cricket ground. Finally, to our left - packed with Reds fans - was the Spion Kop, again smaller than its Forest equivalent, the Bridgford End, but with a similar scoreboard at the back waiting for the half-time scores to appear against the letters allocated to the day’s fixtures in the programme.

 

As first away matches go, it was not exactly an intimidating experience, as Forest fans probably made up at least half of the crowd. There was no obvious segregation on the terraces, there being no reason to expect any crowd trouble. As with any other city rivalry, most fans would have had family members, friends and school or work colleagues in the opposite camp. Indeed, the days were not so long gone since many fans of either of the city’s teams would happily watch whichever was at home (and, moreover, could afford to do so). County were probably still Forest’s main local rivals in those days, as the nascent East Midlands rivalry with Derby County had faded somewhat in 1972 with our relegation.

 

Although the atmosphere was lively and expectant, it was different from what I was used to at Forest. Over the river the singing in the Trent End would be almost non-stop and feature a wide variety of chants. I wasn’t always able to distinguish the words, but perhaps that wasn’t a bad thing, given my age and the Trent End’s reputation for boisterousness and worse. But there didn’t appear to be an obvious singing area at Meadow Lane, nor did the Magpies’ fans seem to have any chants of their own. All I can recall is a repeated “Cahnteh! Cahnteh! Cahnteh!”, which didn’t seem to start in any particular part of the ground. This could be quite loud if enough people joined in, but was likely to be met with an equally voluble “Forest! Forest! Forest!” each time it was aired. A few short years later such chanting of a team’s name would be drowned out by repeated chants of “Shit! Shit! Shit!” from the rival fans, but these were simpler times.

 

With a large crowd packed into a smaller ground than Forest’s, we found ourselves unable to see much of the play, so either at dad’s suggestion or our own initiative, Robin and I picked our way down to the very front of the terrace. On the other side of the wall in front of us was an elderly County fan in a wheelchair. He was well wrapped up against the December chill and, hunched in his chair, his squat figure reminded us of one of the characters in Michael Bentine’s Potty Time, a popular children’s TV programme in the early 70s. Just as the Potty characters’ faces were usually hidden behind a shock of hair, elaborate hats or glasses, all we could see looking down on our new companion’s head was a flat cap, which pivoted from side to side as the action flowed from end to end.

 

Now we at least had a reasonable view when the action was in front of us, though we still couldn’t see much of our side of the pitch at the Spion Kop end. On several occasions it was only the roar of encouragement from the Reds’ fans that told us Forest were breaking down the right, usually through Duncan McKenzie, our main goal threat and my second childhood  Forest hero (after Ian Storey-Moore), who was enjoying the best season of his career,  which he would finish with 26 League goals to his name.

 

As is often the way with such eagerly-anticipated matches, the game was less memorable than the occasion. On 37 minutes, one of those Forest breaks led to us being awarded a penalty, which George Lyall put away for what turned out to be the only goal of the match. As I recall, in a game of few clear chances we seldom looked much like adding to it, but we were able to keep out everything the more physical County side threw at us, despite (or perhaps because of?) playing veteran right-back Peter Hindley in the middle of defence.

 

I wasn’t too young to understand that the result is everything on these occasions. It didn’t need to have been a sparkling performance or an enthralling match. The main thing was that we had won, a belated Christmas present which meant I could look the County fans in the eye when we went back to school after the holiday period. We would go on to finish 7^th, never seriously threatening the promotion places, while County would end up three places behind us. Thus we just about retained our status as the city’s top team, but County would finish above us in both the next two seasons – the only occasions this has happened in my lifetime to date.

 

Forest: Barron, O’Kane, Winfield, Hindley, Cottam, Richardson, McKenzie, Lyall, Martin, O’Neill, Bowyer

 

County: Brown, Brindley, Worthington, Masson, Needham, McVay, Nixon (Collier), Randall, Bradd, Probert, Mann

A lucky point?

 

 

 

Forest 2 Swindon Town 2

Division Two, City Ground, Saturday 21^st October 1972, 8,683

 

It would be fair to say that neither Forest nor the Nottingham public had responded well to the return of Division Two football to the city for the first time in fifteen years. We started the season with two goalless draws and three narrow victories, but this was something of a false dawn and we had only won once since then. Disappointingly, crowds for League games had already dipped below 10,000 on four occasions, with the club pouring oil on the flames of the sale of Ian Storey-Moore and relegation by taking the unusual step of increasing the price of ground admission (to 40p) for a lower grade of football.

 

These days it would also be unusual for a club to retain the services of a manager after an ignominious relegation, but the turnover in the hot seat was less frantic in the 1970s and, despite the fans’ increasingly hostile criticism of Matt Gillies and the committee who were persevering with him, it was only in the week leading up to this game that Gillies finally offered his resignation. He was never to work in football again.

 

Swindon were managed by former Hearts, Tottenham and Derby hard man Dave Mackay, who had joined as player-manager the previous year, but had since hung up his boots. The Robins had their own equivalent of Storey-Moore in Don Rogers, another goalscoring left-winger with a fearsome shot, though he was currently the subject of strong interest from Crystal Palace, which would soon lead to his moving to Selhurst Park.

 

Our own attacking options reflected our inconsistency and perhaps betrayed a certain lack of confidence. In the days when shirt numbers still meant something, the wingers’ shirts (7 and 11) were worn by midfielder George Lyall and young striker Alan Buckley. Meanwhile, a certain John Robertson wore the number eight shirt, in those days associated with the inside-right position, his conversion into a world-class left-winger being some way off at this stage. With centre-forward Neil Martin banished to the reserves for the entire season to date, ‘Sammy’ Chapman had recently been re-deployed in the striking role in which he had broken into the first team almost a decade earlier. And, it has to be said, from which he had been converted to a centre-back once it was decided he might prove more adept at stopping goals than scoring them.

 

With us breaking even in mid-table but struggling for goals and Swindon several places below us with only three wins from fourteen games, this didn’t have the makings of a memorable encounter, but in its way that is just what it would become, for me at least. As with the Wolves game that had all but sealed our relegation five months earlier, I can remember almost nothing of the match itself, so I am indebted to the excellent Swindon-Town-FC.co.uk and, in particular, their reproduction of the match report from the Football Pink, for much of what follows.

 

The Pink’s coverage of the game is a prime example of the football editions of local newspapers that have gradually become extinct this century, such as our own much-missed Football Post. It ticks all the boxes:

•  an attitude that straddles the border between local perspective and local bias;
•  a lack of awareness about the opposition players and their positions;
• descriptions of goals picked out in bold…
• …and goalscorers’ NAMES in capitals;
• enthusiastic sub-editing leading to inconsistencies and non-sequiturs;
• a diminishing level of detail as the match nears its end and the print deadline approaches.

 

Taking all that into account, it seems as though it was a fairly even game, but in the journalist’s eyes Forest lacked urgency up front and composure at the back. Jim Barron was forced into a number of saves, most of them coming in brief flurries of goalmouth activity in each half, with the highlight apparently a full-length dive to turn Peter Noble’s shot past the post. Our best effort of the early exchanges seems to have been a shot that went just wide from midfielder Paul Richardson, described for no readily apparent reason other than the number ten on his back as a “forward”. Elsewhere the same inflexible scrutiny of the Forest line-up in the programme sees Lyall and Buckley unquestioningly described as “wingers”.

 

The only goal of the first half came on 33 minutes, when right winger Steve Peplow (who would play three games for us on loan within a year) punished our defensive slackness to blast the ball past Barron. Within a minute, full-back-turned-midfielder Doug Fraser saw his shot from 15 yards hit the bar and go behind.

 

Predictably, the pattern of the second half was for Forest to push forward more in search of the equaliser, which left us vulnerable to Swindon’s counters. Martin O’Neill came on in place of Richardson with 25 minutes left – time enough, as it turned out, for him to have a decisive impact on the game. Swindon resisted the increasing pressure, though they were helped by our wayward finishing, one of the better efforts again coming from Fraser, who fired just wide, as Lyall had done early in the half. When Downsborough was finally properly tested he dived full-length to save Robertson’s shot from just inside the box.

 

It’s clear that the game had become stretched and for all Forest’s pressure the action was moving quickly from one end to the other. Indeed, the anonymous writer notes that “both teams were playing attacking football”, but almost immediately states that Swindon were “well on top”. But if that wasn’t necessarily the case they certainly were after 83 minutes, when centre-forward Ray Treacy beat two defenders to double the visitors’ lead.

 

Finally we get to the one minute of the match that made it stick in my memory long after the other 89 had faded, where I can add a detail which was either missed by the visiting reporter or culled by his sub-editor. Unsurprisingly, a sizeable minority of the crowd had headed for the exits after the second goal, but four minutes later Robertson scored his first senior goal for the Reds, netting from close range after a goalmouth scramble. Those who had left the ground would have heard the cheer, albeit a relatively muted one at what most people would have seen as nothing more than a late consolation goal. Maybe the odd one or two would have glanced back to see if the final moments would be worth returning for.

 

But within thirty seconds we were level, courtesy of what is reported merely as “a goal from O’Neill”, thanks to the exigencies of the Wiltshire press. At this second and more raucous cheer, dozens of Reds fans hurried back into the ground from the corner between the Main Stand and the Trent End, where a wide gate was always opened a few minutes before the end to allow fans safe egress onto Trentside. They congregated a respectful distance back from the corner flag in the hope that our momentum would see us grab a highly unlikely winner. That proved too much to hope for, but what had clearly been a stuttering, frustrating performance would now be remembered as a spirited comeback.

 

Football fans have a habit of judging whole games on the second half alone. An attacking display in the first half is soon forgotten if the momentum is lost in the second, especially if the result is a defeat or a disappointing draw. But if a lacklustre first half performance is followed by a distinct improvement after the break, the whole game is recalled as a much better spectacle and/or performance than an objective assessment of the ninety minutes might suggest. Here was a prime example, in this case of a single minute altering the verdict on everything that had gone before.

 

The Football Pink’s first paragraph referred to our snatching “a lucky point”, though the subsequent report cannot be read other than as a description of an even game, one in which it would be hard to begrudge either team their share of the spoils. So perhaps we were lucky only in the manner of our claiming the point, though a goal in the 88^th minute is, of course, worth exactly the same as one scored at any other point in the game. It only takes a second to score a goal, as a certain Reds manager of the future was wont to say.

 

A game of which I can only recall thirty seconds is an unlikely pointer to that future. But in the short term, Mackay would be back at the City Ground within a fortnight as Gillies’ replacement. And, with the other end of the decade in mind, it’s notable that our scorers were Robertson and O’Neill, here still finding their feet in our first year back in the Second Division, but showing a never-say-die attitude that would serve them well as they went on to play prominent roles in our promotion four seasons later and the conquest of Europe that was to follow.

 

Forest: Barron, Hindley, Gemmell, Serella, Cottam, Fraser, Lyall, Robertson, Chapman, Richardson (O’Neill), Buckley

 

Swindon: Downsborough, Thomas, Trollope, Smart, Burrows, Potter, Peplow, Howell, Treacy, Noble, Rogers

“Gillies out!”

 

Forest 1 Wolves 3

Division One, City Ground, Tuesday 25^th April 1972, 16,889

You never start a relegation season in the full knowledge that it will end in the dreaded drop. Instead, once any pre-season false optimism has been put firmly in its place, you move all too rapidly from “We could be in trouble here”, through “We’re going down, aren’t we?” to “That’s it, we’re down”. But the hope of somehow turning things round never quite leaves you, however persuasive the evidence to the contrary might be – and in the 1971-72 season there was plenty of that.

It was soon clear even to me, at the tender age of eight and in only my second year as a season ticket holder, that we might not be good enough to stay up. By early November we had managed just two single-goal victories in seventeen Division One games. Things were no better in the new year – we lost seven games in a row, scoring only twice in the process, and also tamely exited the FA Cup at 2^nd Division Millwall. As we went into our final home game at the end of April, nobody in a Forest number 9 shirt had scored since New Year’s Day.

Our attendances were becoming increasingly dependent on the perceived attractiveness of the opposition as well as on our form. Just three days earlier, 35,000 had seen us take on Manchester United, but fewer than 17,000 turned out for this crucial game, which could seal our fate or keep us hoping for a miracle on the final day of the season, while the visit of Ipswich Town for the last of those seven straight defeats had drawn fewer than 10,000. We were among those who persevered through thin and thinner, for Dad would no more give a game a miss than he would leave before the final whistle, however distressing the previous ninety minutes might have been.

For a long time, the main vocal area of the ground was the Trent End, who could be relied upon to keep a variety of chants going throughout the game, even if the front overhang of the roof kept half the noise inside. But during this dismal season a small group of vocal supporters started to watch games from the terrace in front of the Main Stand, the better to barrack manager Matt Gillies and the club’s committee in the posh seats behind them. Gillies had become the first manager to sell four players for fees in excess of £100,000, as the dismantling of the double-chasing team of 1966-67 neared its sorry completion. Five seasons on, only one member of that team, right-back Peter Hindley, would take the field in this match against Wolves.

For all that he was generally stoical and undemonstrative, I have a feeling Dad might have joined in some of the regular choruses of “Gillies - out!” and its occasional variant, “Committee - out!”. The latter reflected the archaic nature (even in those days long before the money-men really put their minds to ruining our national game) of Forest’s uniquely being run not by a board of directors, with money to invest on the back of the profits of their business acumen, but by a committee – a gentlemen’s club in which, it seemed, significant financial input was neither offered nor expected. The fans didn’t devote all their energies to barracking those in charge, though. This same small gathering – barely more than a couple of dozen – also came up with a new chant in support of the team, a repeated rhythmic “C’mon – You – Redduns! C’mon – You – Redduns!”

This was quite possibly the precursor to what became the familiar “Come on you Reds!” that would increasingly be heard not only around the ground, but across the country in a few years’ time. By the end of the 70s we were appearing with increasing frequency in the nation’s living rooms as the BBC and ITV covered our promotion, Championship and European Cup campaigns, and the chant would soon be adopted and adapted to incorporate the colours or nicknames of clubs throughout the land.

Until it became mathematically impossible for us to survive, I was clinging on to a fragment of hope that, despite the sale of top scorer Ian Storey-Moore to Manchester United and a season-ending injury suffered by Northern Ireland international defender Liam O’Kane, we would find some unexpected form and the clubs around us would somehow contrive to lose every game. This wasn’t just the naïve optimism of a child who knows no better (though it was clearly naïve, as I hadn’t realised our two closest rivals would meet in their final game, so at one or both of them would get points); that same hope - heartfelt, but illogical and ultimately fruitless - has accompanied me through all our subsequent relegations.

And, cruelly nurturing that misplaced optimism, Forest had actually shown signs of a late revival, our previous four home games producing three wins and a creditable draw in the United game. One of those wins had been a 4-0 drubbing of Coventry City, in which left-back Tommy Gemmell thundered one in from what seemed like the far end of West Bridgford but was probably about 40 yards in a moment of such unexpected quality and defiance that I remember it to this day (so please don’t tell me it was actually 20 yards and he sliced it). We had even won away for only the second time all season at Stoke City, as I discovered thanks to a new information service provided by Dad.

Hitherto, my brother and I would have had to wait until breakfast the following morning to hear how midweek away matches had gone (although “we lost” would always be a reasonable assumption, pending information to the contrary). This time, Dad was aware we couldn’t wait until then to know the result and jotted it on a scrap of paper and slipped it under the bedroom door. At some point the next morning, one of us woke to discover it and excitedly share the tidings – along the lines of “Won 2-0 – Gemmell and McIntosh” – that allowed our hopes of survival to linger a while longer.

Then came the United draw and the following Tuesday, for the last time for a few months, the three of us parked by the station, walked down London Road and over Trent Bridge to take our places in the Main Stand. That glimmer of hope had not yet been extinguished, as we had now managed to go unbeaten for three games – the most we managed all season – and, just as remarkably, had kept clean sheets in all three. Unfortunately, though, normal service would now be resumed with the visit of mid-table Wolves.

Online details of the game are as fragmentary as my memories of it. From one of the few websites to offer more than the bare scoreline, I am now reminded that we trailed at half time to a Danny Hegan goal, which Kenny Hibbitt added to before Gemmell pulled one back. Any hope that was rekindled by the ex-Celtic legend’s fifth goal in nine games was extinguished when John Richards restored Wolves’ two-goal lead. Unless we allow ourselves to believe that the goals were actually scored in the 45^th, 90^th, 90^th and 90^th minutes, we must assume the website in question contents itself with timing goals to the half rather than the minute.

The one recollection I have of the actual play that might be reasonably plausible is of the almost slow-motion inevitability of the third Wolves goal, as an unchallenged old gold shirt burst through the inside right channel to loft the ball over the advancing Jim Barron and into the Bridgford End goal. I say reasonably plausible, as my memory has been telling me all these years that Hegan, and not Richards, scored that fateful goal. So I now have no idea which goal I have actually been visualising all these years. Either way, the final coup de grace was, at the ripe old age of eight, my very first “That’s it, we’re down” moment. Since then, there’s always been more daylight between that moment of acceptance and the definitive confirmation of our demotion, with experience increasingly triumphing over even the farthest-fetched of hope.

However long an impending relegation has been looming, it’s often surprising how close to the season’s end that a team is finally, unequivocally, mathematically certain to go down and even this crushing defeat didn’t quite seal our fate. But the very next day, Crystal Palace, the only team we could have caught, followed our example in beating Stoke 2-0 and we were down. Before we drew our final game at Everton 1-1, Palace played out a goalless draw with Huddersfield Town and they ended up four points clear of both us and the Terriers. These were still the days of goal average, so Huddersfield finished bottom despite having a better – or, more accurately, less poor – goal difference than ours. Their inferior goal average was a consequence of their scoring just 27 goals in 42 games, which almost makes our goal-shy strike force look prolific.

First Division football had been a long time coming when it returned to the banks of the Trent with our promotion in 1957, three decades after we and Notts County had propped up the top tier in successive seasons. Now the city would find itself once again in the relative footballing wilderness. To make things worse, Notts had been promoted (albeit from Division Four) the previous season, which was enough, given the logic of an average junior school kid, for a classmate of mine to declare in all seriousness that they were now the best team in the city.

If all that wasn’t traumatic enough, 16 miles down a stretch of the A52 that would later be named after him, a certain Brian Clough was winning the Championship with Derby County. Clough was then, of course, a brash, loudmouthed bighead, who did as much as anyone to break up that double-chasing team of ours and hasten our demise. Three members of our Class of 67 contributed to Derby’s triumph – our then skipper Terry Hennessey, striker Frank Wignall and winger Alan Hinton, who was the Rams’ top scorer. We had no idea at the time, of course, that the Derby squad also included five players who would go on to wear the Garibaldi, nor that Clough was, in fact, an eccentric national treasure, a loveable maverick and nothing less than a football genius.

These were the days when managers’ jobs would often be safe despite a relegation, so, as we traipsed forlornly back along London Road to the car, our aspirations probably stretched no further than the removal of the hapless Gillies (he lasted until October) and the chance to win a few more games than we had become used to, perhaps even with a centre-forward scoring from time to time. That’s the thing about hope – as with expectation, the bar is set higher or lower from season to season as your club’s fortunes fluctuate. But even in the face of logic, probability and the evidence of your own eyes, it never quite leaves you. Not for nothing did my branch of the Supporters’ Club, many years later, produce polo shirts bearing the motto dum spiramus, speramus – while we breathe, we hope.

Forest: Barron, Hindley, Gemmell, Serella, Cottam, Fraser, McIntosh, Cormack, Martin, Richardson, McKenzie