A shock defeat, a sending-off and a bloody nose

Forest 0 Mansfield Town 1 
(County Cup Final, City Ground, 4 May 1971; 9,022)

I was born just too late to witness the double-chasing team of 1966-67, fondly remembered to this day and generally accepted as the greatest Forest team of the century and a decade the club spent waiting for Brian Clough to come along. I’m told I was four when I was taken to my first match, which would place it some time in the 1967-68 season, but I was too young to be able to remember it now. By 1971, though, the decline that followed the breaking up of the 66-67 team had meant I had long since got used to attending Forest matches more in hope than expectation.

Following the “Ian Moore gone little” curtain-raiser described elsewhere in these pages, Forest had only won twice more in the League by the end of the year. Better form after Christmas had seen us win eleven more games to finish safely in 16^th place, though we failed to so much as score in our last three games. A home game against third division Mansfield would surely see us retain the County Cup, though, no doubt scoring a few goals along the way. By way of a change – or possibly to save a few of the New Pence the country had been getting used to since February - Dad took Robin and me to stand on the terrace in front of the East Stand.

This was the first time I'd stood to watch football and it turned out to be the first time I'd see violence at a match at close quarters. I can recall very little about the match itself but a solitary Dudley Roberts goal saw a full-strength Forest team lose their grip on the County Cup and right-back Peter Hindley was sent off near the end. Even at the age of seven I realised this wasn’t what was meant to happen. I didn't know much about Mansfield, but I knew they were local (though not as local as County, whose ground we always walked past on our way to the City Ground) and from a lower division, so I knew we really shouldn't be losing to them. And if I hadn’t known that Forest hadn’t had a player sent off since the war, it’s a fair bet that Dad would have pointed this out to me. 

Other than Roberts’ and Hindley’s footnotes in the history of the County Cup, my only other recollection is that towards the end of the game a youth standing near us was given a bloody nose for no reason that was obvious to us. However uninspiring the game was I was no doubt absorbed in it, hoping against hope we would find an equaliser from somewhere. I was vaguely aware of the youth standing in front of us at the bottom of the terrace exchanging comments with one or two other youths. The next thing we knew blood was pouring from his nose from a single punch, without so much as a raised voice from either puncher or punchee. Shortly afterwards, the game ended and the home fans trudged off, leaving the Stags and their supporters to celebrate. We never knew if the incident was to do with the match or entirely unrelated.

Hooliganism had begun to be a problem for the English game in the late 60s. There was no formal segregation in the ground in those days, but away fans usually had the sense to avoid the Trent End, in which Forest’s most boisterous fans could pack a considerable vocal and, occasionally, physical punch. Once in a while a foolhardy visiting fan would try to ‘take’ the home end or a fight might even break out between two Reds. The apparently tightly-packed terrace would then part and close ranks again in time with the combatants scrapping up and down the terrace in an almost cartoon-like blur of flailing limbs. With or withour police intervention the altercation would be over almost as soon as it had started and all eyes would turn back to the action on the pitch.

More often the trouble would occur outside the ground. Dad used to park on Queen’s Road or Station Street, so our walk from or back to the car would occasionally be accompanied by skirmishes when Forest fans heading for the city centre clashed with away fans making for the station. Dad would hastily shepherd us out of harm’s  way and back to the car, fervently hoping the post-match traffic wouldn’t mean we were caught up in the aggro again as the combatants neared the station.

The walk north into the city from Trent Bridge goes through the Meadows, which could be quite a battle-ground in those days. The area was in the process of being redeveloped and for any passing hooligans there was a plentiful supply of bricks from demolished houses or those about to replace them. On one occasion, we saw some cocksure Tottenham hooligans swaggering into the Meadows from the direction of Trent Bridge, only to turn back abruptly (you could almost add your own soundtrack of squealing brakes) at the sight of their Forest counterparts charging back at them from the direction of the station. I can still see the look of shock on the face of the ringleader of the Tottenham gang as he realised he was first in the line of fire. Another time we witnessed a police car doing an excellent impression of a sheepdog, rounding up a gaggle of miscreant youths in what was either a school playground or an empty company car park and encouraging them to disperse in an orderly fashion.

There wasn’t always trouble by any means, but it was common enough that the mere possibility of something kicking off could make the fifteen-minute walk back to the car seem something of a risky undertaking. The bloody nose on the East Stand terrace that night was a violent shock to the system of a sheltered seven-year-old, but the metaphorical bloody nose the Stags dealt Forest and the humiliation of seeing a player dismissed upset me more.


Forest: Barron, Hindley, Winfield, Chapman, O'Kane, Fraser, Jackson (Robertson), Richardson, McKenzie, Cormack, Rees.