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)