There is a song that’s sung by the Kop at most Liverpool home games. It’s one of football’s most famous and dates back to the late 1970s. It starts with the line “We hate Nottingham Forest” and then lists Liverpool’s other great rivals, Everton and Manchester United. There is also an answering chant that used to come from the Trent End at the City Ground: “And Nottingham Forest hate you!”
For most people under the age of 35 you’d understand the last two teams mentioned by Liverpool fans, but Forest? Really? They haven’t even played one another in more than 20 years, a lifetime in footballing terms, yet when I speak to Liverpool-supporting friends of a certain generation they would tell me how desperate they were during every FA Cup draw to pull Forest out of the hat.
Here’s the reason why. In 1975 there would have been no indication that the two teams who would dominate European football for the rest of the decade would be English, barely a two-hour drive across the country from one another. Historical giants such as Ajax and Bayern Munich had pretty much owned the trophy known as “big ears” by fans, but Liverpool were starting to establish their credentials as a European power, winning the Uefa Cup in 1973 and the domestic title in 1977 to qualify for the European Cup, with real ambitions to win it.
With a team packed full of world-class players who had won their domestic league in four of the previous five years, they finally achieved their holy grail in May 1977 when Bob Paisley landed the trophy that had eluded even the great Bill Shankly. That night Liverpool set a precedent that would lead to English teams dominating the competition in a way not seen since.
Meanwhile, on the banks of the Trent they had just appointed the mercurial but temperamental Brian Clough. His glory years at Derby County suddenly seemed light years away after a disastrous 44 days at Leeds United and an ill thought-out stint at Brighton & Hove Albion.
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No one had any idea how it would work out for Clough. But while others talked about it being the last chance for the Boro boy, Clough, in typically bullish form, told his new team — languishing in the Second Division — that their new rivals weren’t Notts County, a few hundred yards over the river and above them in the league, or even Derby (recently crowned English champions), but Liverpool! The story goes that the players all looked at one another as though their new manager were mad, but, in one of the greatest stories in the history of sport, Clough was as good as his word. Forest went on to achieve what has become known as “the miracle”: earning promotion, winning the title and then two European Cups in Clough’s first five years at the club. Even today, there is a reason why modern managers such as Pep Guardiola and José Mourinho will always reference Clough’s achievements as being the greatest ever when he is brought into the conversation. It’s hard to disagree.
Fans of both clubs, Forest and Liverpool, talk about their teams of the late 1970s as being the best they ever had. The sides locked horns in some of the most-watched games of the era, leaving an extraordinary imprint on a whole generation of football fans.
The most famous was a European Cup clash in 1978 that was shown with extended highlights on ITV right across the regions, as we called them then. That match featured a young Garry Birtles scoring his first goal for his home-town club and ended with the blond Mancunian Colin Barrett smashing home a magnificent volley, narrated beautifully by the brilliant Hugh Johns, as Forest won 2-0.
We all talked about it breathlessly in school the next morning. It was European football at its best, played out by two English teams. Forest went on to win the European Cup that season and became something of a nemesis over the next few years for a usually dominant Liverpool team.
Indeed, Liverpool didn’t score against Forest in 9½ hours over those neck-and-neck seasons when they fought one another to a standstill, like two great warriors, for trophies — and remember, that was the Liverpool team who scored 85 goals (conceding only 16) in winning the league in 1978-79.
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Forest’s famous 42-game unbeaten league run (finally surpassed by Arsenal’s Invincibles in 2003-04) was ended by Liverpool at Anfield. Clough walked on to the pitch and clapped his team off that day, while the Kop and the home team celebrated as though they had won a trophy. That’s how much it meant to Liverpool to beat Forest at that time.
This white-hot rivalry had dimmed by the mid-1980s, as Forest lost the extraordinary momentum of the end of the previous decade, but the fans never forgot it, and it would come alive again in the late 1980s. It would become associated with the tragedy of Hillsborough, when the two sides met in an FA Cup semi-final in April 1989.
This will be remembered today, as they play once again in the FA Cup, this time in the quarter-finals. And it will be good not only for fans of the clubs but for those right across football to see one of the greatest rivalries reignited. After all, as Birtles always says proudly when he goes to Anfield to commentate: “See those small gaps in years on the banners, when a great Liverpool team didn���t win any trophies? That was us, that was. That was Forest.” That’s why the song will be sung this evening.
