Deep into the Forest
by Daniel Taylor
(Parrs Wood Press)
THOSE who feel the need to wallow in Nottingham Forest nostalgia — and to be fair, it is a far better form of therapy than dwelling on the present at the City Ground — would have found succour last Thursday night. A rare event was taking place in one of city’s hostelries in the trendy development area of the Lace Market.
Des Walker was holding court with several friends in the corner of the bar, talking as he played his football for Forest and England: swiftly and entertainingly. As most journalists have discovered, interviews have been anathema to Walker over the years but at least some of his inner thoughts are revealed in Daniel Taylor’s excellent tribute book entitled Deep into the Forest.
As the Coca-Cola Championship side prepare to meet Tottenham Hotspur today, many will recall Walker’s infamous headed own goal that handed the North London side the trophy in extra time of the 1991 Cup Final. “It was like slow motion. As I was landing, I was thinking: ‘Oh no, it’s going in!’ ” Walker remembers in a chapter dedicated to the central defender.
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“The most depressing thing for me was that there were 30,000 Forest fans who had made the journey. They were all behind that bloody goal and as the ball went in, it just went quiet. I’m never going to get the chance to put it right. But regrets? You get bad luck but as long as you know in your own mind you were doing the right thing, you have to carry on.”
That defeat deprived Brian Clough, then the Forest manager, of the FA Cup, the only significant trophy he failed to secure during his phlegmatic career. It was in January 1975 that Clough breezed into the City Ground, appointed manager to replace Allan Brown. Ironically, his first game in charge was an FA Cup third-round replay at White Hart Lane against Tottenham. Forest won 1-0.
Testament to the way it was in football back then was how Brown packed his belongings in a small cardboard box and shuffled out of his office in deep mid-winter without such much as a thank you, dismissed after a dismal festive programme culminating in a 2-0 defeat at home to Notts County in the Trentside derby in the old second division.
If Clough, given his socialist upbringing, had a five-year plan, it could not have been executed more perfectly. Promotion, the championship title, two League Cups, the Super Cup and two European Cups were all realised in the heady euphoria that prevailed on the south bank of the River Trent. Those as well as Clough’s first Forest trophy, the AngloScottish Cup, in 1977.
Whether the latter conquest inspired a young Taylor to shoehorn himself into platform heels and tank top to support the team in red at the City Ground is not certain. But it was around that time that the author began his romance with Clough and Forest.
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Three decades on, Taylor is a sports journalist. Older, certainly; wiser, maybe, but from reading his book, the infatuation has not diminished with the passing of time.