"You'd better not miss now!"

Forest 1 Arsenal 1

Division 1, City Ground, Monday 27^th December 1971; 42,750

Sometimes a single player 'carries' an otherwise poor team. Sometimes a single unexpected moment of genius lights up an otherwise dull match. Whenever Reds of a certain vintage recall the greatest goals they've ever seen, it won't be long before the conversation turns to the time when a particular player and moment created one of the few good memories of a thoroughly depressing season.

After a few half-hearted relegation bids, Forest were really going for it this time. By Christmas we were in 21st position with just four wins. In the 23 games to date we’d conceded more than once on thirteen occasions, while we’d even managed to lose five out of the seven games in which we’d scored more than once ourselves. Being unable to defend and unable to win even when we were playing OK was not a good combination. So it wasn't a good time to be playing the team that’d just become only the second to win the double in the twentieth century. Even so, the attractive opposition and the seasonal need for live football to help blow the festive cobwebs away drew more than 42,000 to Trentside. The East Stand terrace was so packed that some youngsters ended up sitting in front of the advertising boards to be able to see the game in a degree of comfort.

It was a game of notable debuts, with a European Cup winner and a World Cup winner making their first appearances in new colours. In our previous home game, Northern Irish international defender Liam O’Kane had broken his leg (with more than a little assistance from his Evertonian opponent) and to help with the defensive reshuffle we had somehow (ie for reasons chiefly to do with the wages we’d offered) managed to sign the legendary Lisbon Lion, Tommy Gemmell, from Celtic.

I was aware of, but too young to remember, Celtic’s 1967 European Cup win (in which Gemmell scored) but they had not long since been finalists, losing to Feyenoord in the 1970 Final. They therefore featured regularly in the likes of Shoot, Goal and Scorcher & Score, which my brother and I devoured each week. (It seems there wasn't a market for titles such as Clean Sheet, Defend or Offside Trap.) Clearly, you couldn’t have a second-favourite team from the same division or even the same league, but Celtic were safely over the border and wore distinctive green and white hoops, and so, for a few years at least, they became my pet Scottish team.

But it wasn’t on account of Gemmell’s unexpectedly swopping the Clyde for the Trent that the TV news cameras were in town. Having witnessed the unfortunate O’Kane’s injury, Alan Ball was back at the City Ground sixteen days later, having joined the Gunners from Everton for a record fee of £220,000. In the days when only two games were shown on Match of the Day and a few seconds of another match made it onto the evening news bulletins, Ball's debut was deemed newsworthy enough to be covered. But he and his famous white boots would only play a minor cameo in the one incident for which this match is still remembered nearly half a century later.

Few will remember George Graham tucking home George Armstrong’s low cross for Arsenal's equaliser, but nobody present will have forgotten Forest’s goal, which came after a quarter of an hour. Ian Storey-Moore was then, as he had been for several years, the star of the team and was once again out-scoring the team’s strikers from his berth on the left wing. Even in our struggling side he already had ten goals to his name and he was on his way to becoming our top scorer for the fourth successive season. His eleventh strike would go down in Forest folklore and for a long time footage of the goal was something of a holy grail for Reds supporters, but in recent years a scrap of video has become available and those of us who witnessed it can finally enjoy it all over again.

It’s a colourful scene, what with Forest’s red and white, Arsenal’s yellow and blue and the green of the pitch, but the less than pristine film has the blurriness and black speckles of a much older vintage. As an Arsenal attack breaks down at the Trent End, Storey-Moore receives the ball from Gemmell a few yards outside the penalty area and proceeds upfield. He is in space to start with so keeps going forward. Ball is running parallel to him, but seems uncertain as to whether to challenge him or mark young Martin O’Neill, who is keeping pace in a more central position.

By the time Storey-Moore reaches the Arsenal penalty area, Peter Simpson is vaguely tracking him, but he only manages a half-hearted movement towards him and by the time Ball realises he now has to make a tackle Storey-Moore is already between them. Finally, Bob McNab lunges in on the ground, but Storey-Moore easily side-steps him and, from the corner of the six-yard box, beats the onrushing Bob Wilson with a low left-footed shot into the corner. Pat Rice and Frank McLintock finally arrive on the scene but it is too late – all Rice can do is retrieve the ball from the net, while McLintock turns towards his beaten defenders, the clip ending before we get to see the inquisition.

By March - following a controversial and protracted transfer that saw Brian Clough prematurely parade him at the Baseball Ground as a Derby player without all the requisite paperwork being in place - Storey-Moore had become a team-mate of George Best’s at Manchester United. Indeed, there are parallels with the frequently shown, and thus much better-known, goal scored by Best that same year against Sheffield United. Not the least of these is the strange reluctance of defenders to put in any sort of challenge for the ball and, if necessary, "take one for the team", especially as these were the days when you usually needed to hospitalise your opponent to get more than a stern talking-to from the referee. But, if anything, this was arguably the better of the two goals. Best only received the ball mid-way inside the Blades’ half, whereas Storey-Moore’s run was variously estimated at between 67 and 74 yards (depending whose account you read). He had plenty of time, as he later readily admitted, to be telling himself, “You’d better not miss now” before tucking the ball home.

The similarities don't end with the comparison of those two goals, either. Storey-Moore and Best both roved more freely than their number 11 and 7 shirts would otherwise have dictated and both were capable of scoring with either foot or their head, and from a variety of ranges. They were the most popular players with the female fans at their respective clubs during the 'swinging' part of the 60s. With the long-ish dark hair, the untucked red shirt and the mesmerising effect on the opposition, it’s easy to see why Storey-Moore’s arrival at Old Trafford was seen by many as a move to eventually replace the wayward Irish genius rather than merely to complement him. And, as it turned out, both clubs struggled in the year they moved on, with our relegation being confirmed that May and Best making his final appearances for United two years later before they joined us in the Second Division.

As for Forest, this encouraging result was followed by another draw, at Manchester City, but we then lost seven games in a row while the Storey-Moore transfer saga dragged on. A subsequent minor revival - with Gemmell at one point weighing in with five goals in nine games from left-back - wasn't enough to prevent us finishing, as we had spent Christmas, in 21st place. It would be five seasons before we returned to the top flight, by which time Clough would be in the dugout and another cult hero would be wearing the number 11 shirt. Storey-Moore scored well over a hundred goals for Forest, but only two of them are ever likely to be described by Reds fans simply as "that goal" - his last-minute hat-trick goal in the famous FA Cup quarter-final win against Everton in 1967 (when he finally scored at the fourth attempt after being denied by a defender, the goalkeeper and the crossbar) and this one, where he arguably out-Bested one of the very best.

 
Forest: Barron, Fraser, Gemmell, Chapman, Hindley, Richardson, Jackson, O’Neill, Martin, Cormack, Storey-Moore; McIntosh