Notts County 0 Forest 1
Division Two, Meadow Lane, Saturday 26th 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 5th in the table, with us 6th 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 20th. 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 7th, 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
No comments:
Post a Comment