Nottingham Forest – How the Mighty Fall

Sean O'Conor

Memories fade like old photographs and past glories slip away gently into the night unnoticed like guests at a large party.

Twenty five years is a long time in any walk of life, not just in football, but it was that long ago that a team from England's East Midlands sensationally became the champions of Europe for the second year running.

Inspired by the legendary manager Brian Clough, Nottingham Forest won the continent's premier football trophy twice and made their home city, a city that also boasts the oldest professional club in the world Notts County, the smallest in Europe to win the prize (until PSV Eindhoven in 1988). When the small, skinny Scot John McGovern raised the huge silver urn of the European Cup aloft to crown the reds' finest hour, an impossible dream had come wonderfully true.

Fast forward a quarter century and the same club find themselves on a rainy October night at Kingfield, the modest 6,000 capacity stadium of Conference side Woking, for an LDV Vans Trophy tie.

Woking treat football seriously, as Forest would find out, but are still a "non-league side", i.e. amateur, or in the case of their league, semi-professional.

Founded in 1889, twenty four years after Forest, the Cardinals' greatest moment came in January 1991 when they famously dumped West Bromwich Albion out of the FA Cup at the Hawthorns 4-2 thanks to a hat-trick from Gibraltarian cricket international Tim Buzaglo.

Despite the Surrey underdogs playing a good five divisions below their next opponents, they lost only 1-0 away to Everton at Goodison Park in the fourth round and enjoyed their fifteen minutes of fame as 5000-1 heroes.

Three times winners of the FA Trophy, the knock-out competition for non-league sides, and a regular bugbear in the FA Cup for the pro teams, Woking have been angling to join the 92 for the last decade but have finished no higher than second, at a time when only the champions of the Conference were guaranteed promotion.

Nottingham Forest on the other hand find themselves the only former winners of the European Cup playing in the third national division of their country.

Their fall from the heights started in Clough's final, calamitous season in charge in 1992-93, when they were relegated from the top flight as the alcoholic Clough took his hands off the wheel but remained so awesome a legend that no one dared fire him.

Despite returning two seasons later and finishing third in the Premiership, and in the quarter-finals of the UEFA Cup the following season, Forest have been stuck in the Championship since 1999 and dropped another rung last season.

A string of managers including Stuart Pearce, Ron Atkinson, David Platt and Dave Bassett all tried to steady the sinking ship but today Forest find themselves in the old third division, a shadow of their former self and perhaps once more the mediocre provincial outfit Clough found when he arrived in January 1975.

"You used to be good, but now you are shit," taunted the Woking fans to their visiting counterparts.

"We have been to Europe, we won the cup twice," the East Midlanders retorted, lest we forget.

Despite rushing back to my home town from the capital I arrived shortly after kick-off and due to the mistaken directions of a club official I found myself amidst the Forest terrace – yes they still exist at this level, which changes its allocation according to the size of the traveling contingent.

I should explain I am Woking born and bred and got into 'the Cards' in the late eighties, shortly before their wondrous cup exploits. However, like all football-mad kids growing up in a county bereft of professional teams, I chose a big team to follow aged five and my team was…Nottingham Forest.

I followed Forest long before I cheered Woking and religiously too, attending the 1991 FA Cup Final, the UEFA Cup Quarter Final at Bayern Munich and Clough's last home game amongst many others.

To my shame I confess to losing interest in the travails of the past few years so it was a little surreal to find myself in my back yard once more among those Midlands accents I used to hear so regularly.

This 'ideal' fixture for me would have occurred back in 1992 had Woking not endeavoured to lose 2-1 to Hereford United after extra-time and a replay in the third round of the FA Cup.

These two sides had never crossed paths before, the only connection being a fruitless and massively unpopular spell Forest's European Cup winning skipper John McGovern had as Woking boss in 1997.

The 762 Forest fans who had made the trip south were in a jovial mood, doubtless due to having long ago accepted their status, or lack of, as well as having the eternal blind optimism of true football supporters.

"Get back to your post round," one wag hollered at a Woking player.
"My garden shed is better than this," sang the Forest fans, comparing the modest Kingfield stadium to their 30,000 capacity Trentside home.
"It is like being in church here," mocked another, "except in church there's a roof."

I could not actually recall the last time I had watched a game 'topless' but as the precipitation glistened and swirled in the floodlights, enveloping the ground in a fine mist, I smiled as I thought there must be no other group of humans in society that eschew umbrellas or leave their hoods down in wet weather.

Goal! The non-league side were in front on nine minutes through Mark Rawle. But then Forest hit back twice before the interval through Eugen Bopp and Spencer Weir-Daley and despite their ten changes from their last league match, they looked set to master the Surrey side.

"Let's be having you!" squealed a pubescent Woking oik at the start of the second period, conclusively proving the malevolent influence of Delia Smith on British youth.

The players must have heard his call to arms as they proceeded to equalize with Rawle scoring again, and then took a 3-2 lead just after the hour mark when former Arsenal man Ian Selley picked out Justin Richards at the far post.

If football has a dramatic and legendary side to it, and the meteoric rise and hubristic fall of Nottingham Forest resembles that of a Greek Tragedy, then it was written in the stars that Forest would lose this match. That the former European champions were beaten by a non league side in a competitive match could be seen as Forest's darkest hour, the nadir of their post-Clough slump.

In reality the young and largely second-string side coach Gary Megson fielded lost by only a goal and Woking, coached by former Southampton hard man Glen Cockerill, were at home, inspired by the opposition's fame and as a Conference team they are well used to scrapping.

Sometimes it seems the lower you go down the leagues, the rawer and more intense the physical battle is and the less it resembles the beautiful game. The cards were in The Cards' favour therefore and I for one was not surprised at the outcome.

The final whistle was greeted with cheers by the 3,127 crowd but not wild celebrations.

"We'll be playing you next year," sang the Woking fans, and they could be right.

No one in the crowd at Kingfield left miserable as far as I could tell. But that in itself tells a sad tale for Forest. Whilst the away fans impressed me with their chirpy high spirits and sustained loyalty to a losing side – Forest are drawing over 19,000 per game this season, the fact they could not get angry about losing to Woking implies a melancholy resignation to fate.

Nor did Woking's supporters dance home through the leafy streets of Surrey at having defeated what not so long ago was a big name in football. Success can be transient and when Forest fans sing of winning two European cups it seems increasingly like an oral legend that has been passed to them instead of something they themselves remember happening.

Hope springs eternal but no club is entitled to permanence and defy the football gods, European champions included.

Images © Sean O'Conor

Sean O'Conor

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