40 years ago Forest did the incredible and retained the European Cup, beating Hamburger SV in Madrid with a goal from, who better? - John Robertson. This time, unlike Munich 1979, I did make it, even though I can remember precious little about the trip. So this is it - the very last blog report in my Forest 40 years ago series. I hate to think how many hours I've spent researching, stealing images and ideas from the web, and then reassembling them on these pages over the last few years but it's definitely been a labour of love. I have to thank my old uni mate, Andrew Smales, for encouraging me (especially early on) and I probably wouldn't have done it without that encouragement.
Although at one time I used to regularly get over 2,000 views of these posts (true, they could have just clicked once and then closed the page down straight away) but that number dropped considerably when the Forest fans' Facebook site got taken down and at least three new ones, with far fewer fans, took its place. This season I've averaged less than 100 views per post. Yes, you might well ask - so why do you bother? Well, at least it's helped me to remind myself of three exciting years watching Forest playing at unimaginable heights, going toe to toe with the very best clubs in the world. Never mind. Hopefully these pages will be around for a few years for anyone who is nostalgic for the days when football was pretty open - imagine an unfashionable club struggling in the second tier today winning the European Champions League in two years time - it's impossible, right? Those days are gone, perhaps forever.
Anyway, in this post, I give my small tribute to three Forest full backs, each one relatively unsung, starting with Colin Barrett. I should have covered his career in the April post as he was let go at the end of the month, but I didn't notice in time. Later, it'll be Frankie Gray's turn, who was one of Clough/Taylor's great signings - the perfect replacement for Frank Clark at the perfect time. Although he wasn't with us for long, Frankie definitely deserves a mention here. Towards the end, surely the most unsung of all the unsung heroes, Bryn Gunn, who came on for about six minutes of the final and so has a European Cup winners medal to show to his family. Whatever happened to him?
Colin Barrett's career was cut tragically short after he badly damaged his knee ligaments in the very next game after Forest's earth shattering 2-0 win at home to Liverpool in 1978. The match that sent us on our way to winning two European Cups. And so, I take a bit of a look at cruciate knee ligaments, how they can get injured and how modern surgery can fix it - sadly techniques too late for Cloughie who suffered a similar injury in 1962. Continuing the anatomical theme, I'll also take a look at Achilles tendon injuries - like the one that shot Francis out of the European Cup in the dying minutes of a stroll in the park against Crystal Palace. With Francis out of contention, the last thing Forest needed was a most unprofessional episode from our talented midfield player, Stan Bowles, ruling him out of the squad too.
As we get to the pointy end of the season I'll show how the FA Cup semi final marathon between Arsenal and Liverpool was finally resolved and how the Hammers beat the Gunners at Wembley to lift the trophy, how Arsenal also lost the Cup Winners Cup final too and how Eintracht Frankfurt won the all-German UEFA Cup. I'll describe how Manchester United's long title challenge finally fizzled out leaving Liverpool to win the league for the 12th time. This was already four more than Arsenal and so they continued to ruin the reputation of the English league for being an open one. I can't forget that Forest also won the County Cup in May 1980 but no-one else seems to care. So there's a quick goodbye to that competition - maybe prematurely.
It was Robbo's goal though, in Madrid, that will forever stick in the memory from forty years ago even though his consecutive run of first class games - a total, after that match, running at 212 - TWO HUNDRED AND TWELVE - is a much more impressive achievement. I am ashamed to admit I missed Robbo's low key testimonial (organised on a Friday night against second division Leicester City - wow, thanks!) and that I missed quite a lot of the away games as the season ended. At least I didn't miss much. Forest's away form, in the league at least, was relegation standard, even though at home they couldn't lose, finishing with eight straight wins.
As this is the last post in the 40 years ago series, I'll put in some summary stats for the whole period and remind people that Forest's glorious period didn't actually end here. Under Brian Clough, Forest would stay a force in English football for another ten years or so.
I sign off with my usual musical nostalgia and, a bit of 80s tely too. Ok. I hope some people enjoy reading this... if so, please share the link and remember you can search the entire blog by using the menu at the top.
Previously - Ajax Amsterdam in April for Anderson and All.
Clough and Taylor were always supportive of players that gave 100% while they were at the club, but they were not at all sentimental about letting them go once they'd decided their best years were over. And this seems to have been the case with Colin Barrett, who's football career was cut cruelly short by a nasty injury against Middlesbrough, resulting in damage to ligaments in his knee - in a very similar way to those that ended Cloughie's playing career in 1962. It happened just ten days after the highlight of Barrett's career, a fantastic volley to put Forest 2-0 up in the European Cup First Round clash with Liverpool at the City Ground - a result that really set the platform for the Reds' amazing European success I've tried to document in these pages.
Colin Barrett was born on 3rd August 1952 in Cheadle Heath, near Stockport. He was one of those late developers - players who weren't picked up as gifted by some scout or other when they were just out of nappies. He worked at the Hawker Siddeley Aircraft Factory after leaving school and played amateur football for Cheadle Heath Nomads. But in May 1970 he was finally spotted and signed for Manchester City, still 17 years old at the time.
Barrett made his first-team debut aged 20 on 19th August 1972, having got his place instead of the injured Tony Book. It was a good start. City beat Norwich 3–0 at home. He was always a versatile defender, playing fullback or center back. He played in both legs of the 1973-74 Football League Cup semi-final defeat of Plymouth Argyle, but he was never a regular over the next four years.
Barrett's last game for City was at Leicester on 31st January 1976. He played in 65 competitive first team games (53 in the league). His only goal came against Scunthorpe United, a 6–0 win, at home, on 10th September 1974 in the League Cup.
Now aged 23, and a little frustrated, he was swooped upon by Brian Clough and joined Forest, initially, on loan. Colin made his debut for Forest on 13th March 1976 in our 1–0 home win against Fulham. It was my 70th Forest home match and Barrett played alongside Sammy Chapman in the back four. Barrett completed his move in April 1976 for a £29,000 fee and made 10 appearances for the reds before the end of the season.
Barrett wasn't a regular in their promotion winning season as Viv Anderson and Frank Clark had the full back slots tied up and Sammy Chapman and Larry Lloyd were first choice in the center. He made only 13 appearances in the 1976-77 season. The highlight for Colin was probably scoring twice in the Anglo-Scottish Cup final second leg, a 4-0 win (5-1 aggregate) against Orient. Don't scoff. Clough always maintained that winning that trophy was key to Forest's later success - it gave the players a taste for winning things.
Barrett's best season was undoubtedly that of Forest's amazing return to the top flight when they won the league at the first attempt. Now aged 25, Barrett displaced Frank Clark as a regular at left back. He played in 35 of Forest's league games and played in both legs of the semi-final win, this time against Leeds United. Unfortunately, he missed out in the final due to a stress fracture and Frank Clark came back in.
As champions, Barrett was a first choice part of the team early in the season. He played at Wembley as Forest beat Ipswich Town 5–0 in Charity Shield. But probably the highlight of Colin's career came on Wednesday, 13th September in the very awkward first round match against Liverpool in the European Cup. Barrett scored the second goal, a cracking volley from short range, in the 2–0 home leg win in the first leg. It came in the 86th minute. Barrett drove home a right foot volley of a knockdown by Tony Woodcock.
Murphy's Law struck though. Just 10 days after this career high, came a crushing career-ending low. Barrett was playing left back at home to Middlesbrough. It was the Saturday before the European Cup second leg at Anfield. Barrett describes the incident: "I pushed the ball out and stretched for it, and John Mahoney hit me from the side. I tried to walk because Cloughie is shouting, “Get up”. Then the ball came to me, I put it from right to left, and I just fell over, collapsed. I didn’t know how serious it was. In the hospital they told me my knee ligaments had gone and I was having surgery at Harlow Wood near Mansfield. ‘I had my leg in plaster for six weeks, which they did in those days, then went for a week’s rehabilitation. I tried to come back and it was too soon. It kept going."
Although I must have witnessed it, I am ashamed to say I have no memory of the incident whatsoever. One can only presume the challenge was accidental. Mahoney had been a regular in Tony Waddington's Stoke City team that almost won the league in 1974-75, playing alongside Alan Hudson. Like, Peter Shilton, it was the thought of playing at Mansfield's Field Mill that persuaded him to move to Middlesbrough after Stoke got relegated.
Anyway, back to Barrett. Colin had to listen to Forest's heroic 0-0 draw at Anfield from his hospital bed and only played 12 further senior competitive games in his career the last of which was less than two years after the Boro game. He eventually made his comeback to the Forest first team in March and he played seven more games, including the 1979 Football League Cup Final 3–2 win against Southampton, before his knee went again. He also played in Forest's pulsating semi-final against F.C. Koln en route to winning the 1979 European Cup Final but his injury prevented him being considered for the final.
So, like it was for Cloughie himself, torn knee ligaments ended his career. It's not surprising this happens so often when you consider the quite gracile looking anatomy in the context of some of the crunching tackles that used to come in those days (and still do, I suppose.)
I'm not sure which of Colin Barrett's ligaments was torn but it is commonly the Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL). It is so called because it the most forward (anterior) of two ligaments that tie together the tibia (shin bone) and femur (thigh bone) in the center of the knee. Cruciate (cruciatus) = "Cross" in Latin. As the figure above shows, there are other ligaments too, such as the medial collateral ligament (which is also commonly torn) and the lateral ligament. An ACL injury is common when a player turns suddenly or gets jolted from the side in a collision.
In 1962, when Cloughie's had his injury (for Sunderland v Bury on Boxing Day at Roker Park) there was no hope of any surgery to fix this kind of injury. These days, surgery is much more sophisticated and reliable. A recent study suggests that 72% of (male) footballers who suffer ACL injuries recover to play again within a year, over 60% at the same or higher level than before. Perhaps most famously, Ruud Van Nistlerooy and Alan Shearer both came back after ACL surgery. I guess Colin Barrett's injury came a bit too early for these advances in surgery to have been available.
It's remarkable to consider what actually must go on when a player goes under the knife for this kind of thing.
So Colin Barrett's last game for Forest was at home to Manchester United a week after the Köln game, on 18th April 1979. Forest drew 1-1 in front of 33,830 fans. He did go to Olympic Stadium in Munich for the final but didn’t feel part of celebrations after the 1-0 win over Malmö. That must have been one very miserable dressing room with Barrett, O'Neill and Gemmill all grumpy about missing the final through injury. Barrett later said "When you miss finals, I’ve said this a million times, you might as well be sitting at home,’ he says. ‘All you want to do is play. I say, “I’ve not won the European Cup.” Everybody says, “Why?” I have this feeling that if you don’t cross that white line in the final you’ve not won it. It is old-fashioned." Forest did give Barrett a medal and miniature trophy to show for his contribution though. I'm sure he's proud of that today.
At the end of the 1979-80 Barrett joined Swindon Town but he knew his playing days were over. "Finished at 29" as he says. There weren't many jobs going for ex-footballers so he moved back to Southwell (pronounced "suthull") because Nottingham had been ‘where times were good’. After working in a pub, making snooker tables ‘at the height of the craze’, and ‘hating’ a job back at Forest on the commercial team selling lottery tickets, he started to paint the outside of his house. He turned out to be pretty good at it and so that's what he did for years after that.
In 1979/80 he only played for Forest in non-competitive games. Overall Barrett played 93 competitive games (scoring 8 goals) and 128 first team games (scoring 11 goals) in total for Forest.
This was the first time, in the F.A. Cup's (then) 119 year history that a semi final had required three replays because of previously drawn games. The only other time a 4th replay was required, back in 1898-99, was because the third replay had to be abandoned at half time because of a crush in the crowd and dark conditions at Fallowfield Stadium in Manchester.
I'd never heard of it either.
Apparently, as well as hosting a number of Rugby League Finals it was actually the venue of the F.A. Cup Final itself in 1982-93 when Wolves beat Everton 1-0. It also hosted one other semi final before the one that got abandoned.
The ground was bought by Manchester University in the early 1960s and was still being used for sports until the mid 90s. It's now been developed into student accommodation.
Of course, historically, a lot (about a quarter) of F.A. Cup ties, including semi-finals, had to be decided by a replay before penalties were introduced in the new Millennium. If you look at the pie chart below it might be surprising, at first, to see that 6 ties didn't require even a single match - until you remember that in the early days teams might not even turn up because they couldn't afford the train fare! Perhaps some of them were because of the F.A. organisers couldn't do the maths to realise that you needed four teams in the semi-finals. I find it incredible that a team would receive a bye into the final so often in the early years of the cup.
Here's an amazing image of the Liverpool v Sheffield United semi-final - 3rd (or 4th?) replay at the ram shackled old Baseball Ground. The Blades won 1-0 to reach the final where they would, ironically, face Derby County at Crystal Palace in front of 74,000 fans. United won 4-1 to win the F.A. Cup for the first time. Question for football nerds - who were the team that had won the F.A. Cup the season before?
So, Brian Talbot's 11th minute goal finally separated the two teams and it would be Arsenal that would go onto Wembley to meet their London rivals, West Ham United.
Here are the match highlights...
Before the match, there was an announcement that Larry Lloyd had been voted Forest's player of the season. Larry had been an ever present and, at the age of 32 was playing some of the best football of his career. One only has to read some of the compliments of his team mates to appreciate that he deserved the award but I can't help wondering how poor Forest's away form was that season after being so solid in recent years, and wondering whether it was therefore appropriate to give the award to a defender.
I was sat up in the new "Executive" stand on a brilliantly sunny Saturday afternoon as I flicked through the match day programme.
Martin O'Neill returned to the side for Gary Mills.
Nottingham Forest
1 Peter Shilton, 2 Viv Anderson, 3 Frank Gray, 4 John McGovern, 5 Larry Lloyd, 6 Kenny Burns, 7 Martin O'Neill, 8 Stan Bowles, 9 Garry Birtles, 10 Trevor Francis, 11 John Robertson.
Goals: Larry Lloyd 1, Trevor Francis 2, John Robertson 1.
Substitutions: Gary Mills (12) came on for Frank Gray(3).
Crystal Palace
1 John Burridge, 2 Paul Hinshelwood, 3 Kenny Samson, 4 Peter Nicholas, 5 Jim Cannon, 6 Billy Gilbert, 7 Jerry Murphy, 8 Gerry Francis, 9 Ian Walsh, 10 Mike Flanagan, 11 Vince Hillaire
Forest were totally dominant against a pretty good Crystal Palace side who had started the season so well and beaten us down at Selhurst Park back in December. In May though, Forest were 3-0 up at half time and were playing some great stuff. Francis, again, was on fire.
In the second John Robertson made it 4-0 and Forest were cruising to yet another home victory - their seventh consecutive one. Francis was playing another blinder and it started to look like Forest were assuring themselves of a place in next season UEFA Cup, as insurance against losing to Hamburg in Madrid in 25 days time.
Then with about ten minutes left on the clock, Francis received the ball in front of the Palace penalty area and looked up and started one of his blistering runs. Suddenly, though, he stopped dead in his tracks. From where I was sat it looked very serious from the second I saw it. Francis later said that he literally thought that someone had shot him in the ankle from the crowd, the pain was so sudden and sharp.
Francis' achilles tendon had ruptured and he was led off the field. Forest had to play out the game with ten men as Frank Gray had earlier been replaced by Gary Mills and only one sub was allowed in those days. Another injury worry to add to the list.
.
Elsewhere, Liverpool finally clinched their second successive league title as they beat Aston Villa 4-1 at Anfield whilst Manchester United lost 2-0 at Leeds. It had been a good title race, but Manchester United's long period without an English Championship (then at an unlucky 13 years) was set to go on for a while yet. In fact this was just about the half way mark of their most barren period. You might remember they'd finally win the title again in 1992-93 which would be the first of thirteen in the next 21 seasons. The era of the English Football League being open was well and truly closing.
Meanwhile Leicester City won the Second Division title with Birmingham City and Sunderland promoted too. In the Third Division Sheffield Wednesday clinched their promotion too, in front of 32,734.
At least Man U finished top of the current league (last three home/away) table.
And Forest's home form continued to be good enough to be in championship contention.
The table... almost complete now.
Here are the highlights from Elland Road - Leeds United 2 Manchester United 0.
And here's how Liverpool clinched the title with a 4-1 win over Aston Villa.
After looking at Colin Barrett's terrible knee ligament injury, I feel morbidly compelled to follow up by looking into another potential achilles heel of the life of a professional footballer - the achilles tendon injury.
This tendon gets its name from a Greek soldier in the Trojan war (you may remember, Ajax's cousin.) He was the best, biggest, bravest, cleverest, strongest soldier but was bizarrely shot by an arrow through his heel (by another Greek legend called Paris). How ironic. Such an invincible hero in all parts of his body - except his bloody heel! Hence the term "Achilles' heel" has come to mean a point of weakness, especially in someone or something with an otherwise strong constitution.
The Achilles tendon is also called the calcaneal tendon because it joins the calf muscle (gostrocnemius - from Latin modern Latin, from Greek gastroknēmia ‘calf of the leg’, from gaster, gastr- ‘stomach’ + knēmē ‘leg’ (from the bulging shape of the calf).) to the heel bone (the calcaneus).
The muscle is termed a plantar flexor of foot and flexes the knee used in running. Unfortunately for Trevor Francis, too much strain must have been put on it in the 80th minute at the City Ground on the 3rd May 1980.
The surgeons who operated on Trevor's tendon must have sen something like this...
The procedure, compared to an ACL reconstruction, is at least fairly straightforward, if agonising to consider.
Francis would be out for 231 days, that's until 20th December 1980, well into the next season. His return match was a 3-1 home win against newly promoted Sunderland. Forest won 3-1 in front of 23,151. Trevor scored.
I must admit when I was trying to remember about Trevor Francis and his contribution to Forest's double European Cup success, I'd got it in my mind that there'd been a kind of perverse symmetry here. In 1978-79, he'd definitely missed all Forest's games on their way to the final, but played a vital role in the deciding match, helping them to beat Malmo in Munich. But I'd managed to convince myself that in 1979-80 it was the opposite: he'd played brilliantly on the run up to the final but then, thanks to this tragic injury, missed out.
In fact, the truth (of course - this is my memory we're talking about here) wasn't quite like that. In fact on Forest's run to the 1980 final, Francis had only figured in the last two of the four rounds. He'd played in both legs against Dynamo Berlin in the quarter final, and both in the semi-final against Ajax Amsterdam but he missed both the Oster Vaxjo and Arges Pitesti ties.
Anyway, poor ol' Trev.
~
After the final Saturday of the season there were just six games outstanding in the first division - these days they'd have been forced to be played before the final Saturday of the season but in 1980 people seemed to be more trusting.
So - six games to go, on six different days. The first was on the following Monday. Forest had three to play, as did Arsenal. Wolves and Middlesbrough had two to go. Everton just one as did Liverpool.
Arsenal
1 Pat Jennings, 2 John Devine, 3 Sammy Nelson, 4 Brian Talbot, 5 David O'Leary, 6 Willie Young, 7 Liam Brady, 8 Paul Vaessen, 9 Frank Stapleton, 10 David Price, 11 Graham Rix.
Substitutions: John Hollins (12) came on for Frank Stapleton (9).
Nottingham Forest
1 Peter Shilton, 2 Viv Anderson, 3 Frank Gray, 4 John McGovern, 5 Larry Lloyd, 6 Kenny Burns, 7 Martin O'Neill, 8 Ian Bowyer, 9 Garry Birtles, 10 Gary Mills, 11 John Robertson.
Attendance 34,632
Perhaps surprisingly, considering their record away from Nottingham, Forest managed to avoid defeat for consecutive away games for only the third time of the season, the last time being back in early October. Contrast that with their title winning first season in Division One in 1977-78 when they only lost consecutive away games once, or the following season, 1978-79 when they never did.
I can't find any video highlights but here's a match day report...
The point had little affect on the title, but both Arsenal and Forest just had two games to go now.
Only Jim Montgomery could be said to have not been a first teamer, and he was no slouch of course.
Nottingham Forest
1 Jim Montgomery, 2 Viv Anderson, 3 Frank Gray, 4 John O’Hare, 5 Larry Lloyd, 6 David Needham 7 Martin O’Neill, 8 Ian Bowyer, 9 Kenny Burns, 10 Stan Bowles, 11 John Robertson
Forest won 2-0 John O'Hare and John Robertson scorers.
Attendance 8,339
Mansfield Town beat Forest than night 1-0 with a Dudley Roberts header in the Trent End so the next final was at Field Mill. If I remember rightly Notts County beat Forest in the semi that year to play the Stags. But I have no memory or record of any of the results since then.
Oh well.. bye bye County Cup, I suppose.
The same night, another of the remaining first division games was played. Having won the league on Saturday, Liverpool played out their last league fixture at Ayresome Park and lost 1-0.
Three nights after the County Cup final, another game, another full strength side. On the Friday night Forest played their last league game of the season at home to Everton.
I did go to this and, it was my 400th match.
Stan Bowles returned to the side in place of Ian Bowyer who took his place back on the subs bench. Ironically, this would be Bowles' last game for the club as he was about to have a big row with Cloughie and so would miss out on the chance to play in the European Cup final.
In the Everton line up that night, Graeme Sharp made his full debut for the club having come on as sub at Brighton on the last full Saturday of the season. Sharp was not yet twenty years old having signed from Dumbarton over a year earlier.
Sharp would make 322 league appearances for the club until 1991, scoring 111 goals.
It had been a terrible season the "the Toffies" as they finished 19th, just one place above relegated Bristol City. The margin was only four points although Everton had the better goal difference. It was their worst position in the league since they returned to the first division in 1954. Their only silver lining was a good cup F.A. Cup run - reaching the semi final. It was a surprising down turn, after being title contenders the previous couple of seasons.
Nottingham Forest
1 Peter Shilton, 2 Viv Anderson, 3 Frank Gray, 4 John McGovern, 5 Larry Lloyd, 6 Kenny Burns, 7 Martin O'Neill, 8 Stan Bowles, 9 Garry Birtles, 10 Gary Mills, 11 John Robertson.
Goals: Viv Anderson 1.
Substitutions: Ian Bowyer (12) came on for Garry Birtles(9).
Everton
1 George Wood, 2 John Gidman, 3 John Bailey, 4 Michael Lyons, 5 Billy Wright, 6 Trevor Ross, 7 Gary Stanley, 8 Bob Latchford, 9 Graeme Sharp, 10 Asa Hartford, 11 Eamon O'Keefe.
Again, no video - but here's the match report.
So, now there were just three games to go...
Forest's form was now pretty good as they had actually drawn their last two away games.
And with yet another home win, that made it seven consecutive home league wins on the trot, surely their best ever. (Sorry, I can't be bothered to check!)
End of the season at the City Ground - eight wins on the trot in all competitions.
That really was a great home record. If their away form had only been half decent, Forest would surely have challenged for the title.
It was another disappointing attendance, the second worst league crowd of the season. This was the team about to play in their second successive European Cup Final, remember.
Although, to be fair, Forest's average attendances for the whole season were (slightly) above average even though for the start of the campaign the capacity was drastically reduced due to the replacement of the old East Stand.
The following day was F. A. Cup Final Day and the all-London affair between Arsenal and West Ham United.
It's interesting to note how John Motson spotted the goal better and quicker than Brian Moore in the two TV rival's commentaries...
Here's Brian Moore's take on the goal...
... and here's John Motson...
1-0 to the BBC.
It was West Ham United's third F.A. Cup win. Their only Cup Final defeat was when they played Bolton Wanders in the 1922-23 final, the very first one at Wembley which may have been watched by over 200,000 spectators. Since then, the Hammers have only made it to one more final, the one against Liverpool played at the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff in 2006. That final, like the one before it, (Arsenal v Manchester United, also in Cardiff) was decided on penalties after extra time. Ironic, after Arsenal and Liverpool had need three replays to decide the tie in a semi final forty years ago.
So, football nerds, which team had won the F. A. Cup most in 1980? Not West Ham. Not Arsenal. Not Liverpool. Not Manchester United. And while you have your thinking cap on, which three teams had won it most? Answer coming up soon...
So, who had won the Cup most in 1980? Aston Villa with 7 wins. Next, in joint second place with six wins each.... Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle United. How refreshing to have a major competition (yes, the F.A. Cup is a a major competition, you young dudes! - the oldest in the world, no less) shared by clubs outside the modern boring greediership oligarchy.
Who's won it most today?
Arsenal with 13 wins, followed by Manchester United's 12, followed by Spurs and Chelsea with eight each. Of course, neither Villa, Blackburn nor Newcastle have won it in the last 40 years.
A decent crowd of around 5,800 watched a full-strength Forest side beat a Brest team that had been strengthened by a few loanees
John McGovern scored the only goal, and here are the highlights...
1 Peter Shilton, 2 Viv Anderson, 3 Frank Gray, 4 John McGovern, 5 Larry Lloyd, 6 Kenny Burns, 7 Martin O’Neill, 8 Stan Bowles, 9 Garry Birtles, 10 Gary Mills, 11 John Robertson.
There was no rest for the wicked and Forest played again two days later in their last league game of the season.
Monday, 12th May
And, of course, how else to end this season than with yet another away defeat. Again, I am ashamed to admit I didn't go, although I probably could have. Football fatigue, maybe?
Ian Bowyer came back in for Stan Bowles and John O'Hare took Gary Mills' place up front in the No 10 shirt trying to be the new Trevor Francis.
Wolves were unchanged.
Wolverhampton Wanderers
1 Mick Kearns, 2 Geoff Palmer, 3 Derek Parkin, 4 Peter Daniel, 5 Emlyn Hughes, 6 George Berry, 7 Kenny Hibbitt, 8 Colin Brazier, 9 Andy Gray, 10 John Richards, 11 Melvyn Eves.
Goals: Geoff Palmer 1, Kenny Hibbitt 1 (pen.), John Richards 1.
Nottingham Forest
1 Peter Shilton, 2 Viv Anderson, 3 Frank Gray, 4 John McGovern, 5 Larry Lloyd, 6 Kenny Burns, 7 Martin O'Neill, 8 Ian Bowyer, 9 Garry Birtles, 10 John O'Hare, 11 John Robertson.
Goals : Martin O'Neill 1.
Substitutions: David Needham(12) came on for Kenny Burns (6).
Match in a nutshell: Kenny Hibbitt put Wolves ahead from the penalty spot after 5 minutes.
Martin O'Neill equalised for Forest in the 69th.
John Richards restored Wolves lead on 77 minutes
Geoff Palmer made it 3-1 on 81 minutes.
And so ended an uncharacteristically Jeckyl & Hyde season for Forest. Brilliant at the Fortress City Ground, but very dodgy indeed away from home. This wasn't what Clough and Taylor had built their reputations on.
Oddly, it was mainly in the league where their away form suffered. They were unbeaten in five away games in the League cup and won their only F.A. Cup away tie. In Europe that played five away, won two, drawn two and lost only one.
Forest's away attendances that season averaged over 30,000, the third best in the league behind only the might, mighty Liverpool and Manchester United...
Here's the detail of Forest's away attendances...
Forest had a very consistent side, then with six players playing in practically every game. Imagine that these days!
It should go without saying that right at the top of any such list in those days was always John Robertson. This was his third consecutive season that he played in every single game. The appearance at Wolves was his 211th consecutive competitive first team match for Forest. I feel like a madman that I seem to be the only person even aware of this, let alone impressed with it, but I'll keep reminding anyone reading these pages, at every opportunity.
Robbo!! Robbo!! Robbo!! Robbo!!
As an extra bonus, Robbo was also the top scorer for the season in all competitions, with 18 goals - albeit with 13 from the penalty spot.
There were three other league ever-presents that season too. Goalkeeper Peter Shilton, Garry Birtles and Player of the Season, Larry Lloyd, but only John Robertson and Peter Shilton played in all 65 Forest first team games in all competitions.
Here's the full table of players' appearances for the season...
As you can see, three players missed just one league game. John McGovern missed just one match, away at Crystal Palace. Forest lost 1-0 that day on 8th December. The ever versatile Ian Bowyer slipped on his No 4 shirt that day. Viv Anderson missed the 1-0 defeat away at Bolton Wanderers, Bryn Gunn stepping in for him there. And finally, Frank Gray also made 41 appearances, missing only the home game against Bristol City on 9th February. This would be the only game Frank Gray missed in the whole season in any competition. It was Bryn Gunn again who stepped in there that day. More on Bryn later, but I've not really given Frank Gray much attention since I reported about his signing - a very smart and smooth one at the end of last season - to replace Frank Clark. So, here's my short tribute to a great Forest player, albeit one who was only with the club for a short time.
Frank's first start came a couple of months later at home to Crystal Palace, on 21st April 1973. He wore the shirt his brother famously wore under Don Revie, No 11. Leeds won 4-0 with Frankie even getting on the score sheet. The first time the two bothers were both named in the same side was at The Dell the next week. The Saints won that one 3-1. Eddie wore 10, Frankie 11.
Leeds' regular left back, Terry Cooper broke his leg at one point and so Frank Gray established himself in the left back slot in the team.
Frank followed in Eddie's footsteps for Scotland too. Frank's first cap came on April 7th, 1976 v Switzerland in Glasgow, at the age of 21, seven years after Eddie's debut at the same age (well, a few months younger) on 10th May 1969 at Wembley against England. Scotland lost 4-1. They never played in the same team. Frank had already been capped 7 times whilst he was with Leeds by the time he came to Forest.
Frank Gray was one of Clough/Taylor's best signings made in the close season after the retirement of the ever dependable Frank Clark. Gray was in from the start and made his Forest debut in the first game of the 1979-80 season, at Portman Road, where Forest beat Ipswich Town 1-0 with a Tony Woodcock goal.
Frankie Gray made another 7 appearances for Scotland whilst he was at Forest but at the end of the 1980-81 season, he moved back to Leeds United, who were then under the management of Allan Clarke. His last game for Forest was the last game of the season at home to Coventry City. Forest drew 1-1 (with a John Robertson penalty) in front of 21,511 fans.
Gray figured in the opening line up of the season, back alongside brother Eddie. The game was at Vetch Field, home of newly promoted Swansea City. It wasn't a happy day for the Gray brothers as Leeds got thrashed 5-1. Things never really improved and the club got relegated despite Frank Gray making 36 appearances and Eddie, 29. Clarke got sacked and Leeds' next old boy to try to fill Revie's shoes would be brother Eddie himself.
Frank made 18 more appearances for Scotland during his second spell with Leeds. His final cap was on 16th June 1983 whilst tour with Scotland in Canada. Scotland won 3-0 in Edmonton that day. Frank eon 32 caps for Scotland in all, compared to Eddie's 12.
Under Eddie Gray, Leeds struggled in the mid table depths of the second division for four years with Frank a regular until he decided to leave for Sunderland. His last appearance for Leeds was at Birmingham City on the last day of the 1984-85 season. Leeds lost 1-0 and they club finished 7th well short of promotion contention behind Oxford United, Birmingham and Manchester City.
Things went even worse at Sunderland. Gray made his debut for them at home to Blackburn at Roker Park on the first game of the next season. Sunderland lost 0-2 the first of five straight defeats at the start of that season. They were still bottom and without a win when Frank Gray scored his first goal for his new club, at Elland Road of all places, where Leeds and Sunderland played out a 1-1 draw. Sunderland's form improved as the season progressed and they just about managed to avoid the drop to the third division.
Gray made 37 appearances the following season but Sunderland finally succumbed and were relegated to the third tier for the first time in the club's illustrious history. Under Dennis Smith, Sunderland bounced straight back but with Frankie Gray making only 12 starts. The next season, 1988-89, with Sunderland back in mid table respectability in the second division was Gray's final "hurrah!" as he made 36 starts and 4 appearances as a substitute.
Frank Gray's last appearance for Sunderland was on 29th April 1989 when he came on as a substitute for Rueben Agboola, the ex-Southampton player I have a strange hunch was at Nottingham University the same time I was. Or maybe he was just a mate of a someone who knew him at Southampton?
Frankie was approaching 35 by now and decided to take a step down to the GM Vauxhall Conference and 32 miles or so south to Feethams and Darlington FC who had just been relegated from the football league for the first time. Darlo stormed to win the title at the first attempt with Frankie Gray making 36 appearances.
So after one season playing for a non-league side, Frank Gray was back to add the fourth division to his list of football tiers played in. Darlington were on fire and stormed to another title, winning the Fourth Division, a point clear of (amazingly) Stockport County and Hartlepool, as well as Peterborough United. Gray made 43 appearances and almost top scored with seven goals (six were penalties.)
Back in the third division, Frank Gray started the 1991-92 season as player manager but it didn't last long. Now in his 37th year, Gray started the season having to be taken off in four out of five of the opening games. Frankie made his last league appearance at home to Huddersfield Town on 15th February 1992 at the age of 37. 3,120 saw the Terriers win 3-1 on their way to promotion, as Darlo were going back down.
So Frankie Gray played professionally for about twenty years, like his brother. Whereas Eddie had been a one-club man - 454 league appearances, all for Leeds United - Frankie had two spells at Leeds, making up more than half of his overall appearances but when you add in his decent spells at Forest, Sunderland and Darlington, it leaves a total of 644 appearances altogether.
Well done, Frankie Gray!
Here are the match highlights...
Anyway, no excuse. Sorry Robbo!
Few players in the history of the game have deserved a testimonial more. I'm not sure what the attendance was that night but I am certain it wasn't as many as he should have had. With all due respect to Leicester City, a match against a second division side was hardly a fitting match for the testimonial of probably Forest's greatest ever player.
I notice, reading through a few of the pages of the programme that the Forest's @NFFC40 posted on twitter, that there was not one word of mention of his amazing run of consecutive games. Yes, I know. I'm getting very boring and monotonous. But, come on... he'd just played two hundred and eleven CONSECUTIVE games for the club at the very top level of the game.
One significant absentee from the Forest team that night was Stan Bowles. Looking back from here that seems reasonable to me. Ian Bowyer had played alongside Robbo for years, whereas Bowles was the new kid on the block. I'm sure "Bomber" Bowyer would have been upset if he'd have been left out. But according to Stan though, this was the last straw and put his back up against Cloughie.
The Forest team...
1. Peter Shilton, 2. Viv Anderson, 3. Frank Gray, 4. John McGovern, 5. Larry Lloyd, 6. Kenny Burns, 7. Martin O’Neill, 8. Ian Bowyer, 9. Garry Birtles, 10. Gary Mills, 11. John Robertson,
Subs: John O’Hare, Bryn Gunn
The same night Arsenal made up for their European Final defeat with a win at Wolves to reinforce their 5th place in the league.
But the following Monday night, the same eleven got thrashed at Ayresome Park on the final match of the Division One season.
So Derby County ended an eleven year spell in the first division. For Bristol City, it was just their 4th season in the top flight. In case you were wondering, no, this was not their longest run. From 1906 until 1911 they were there for five seasons, albeit when the league only had two divisions. The Robins have not been back since. For Bolton it was just their second season back.
Similarly, Birmingham City rebounded at the first attempt, Leicester City at the second and Sunderland at the third. Going in the opposite direction, Burnley were relegated to the third division for the first time in their history. Fulham too were not used to such ignominy, they were going to the third tier, after nine seasons in the second, for only the third time. Charlton Athletic had been in the third tier (South) before the war but this was only their second relegation there since the war.
From the Third Division, Grimsby Town were returning to the Second for the first time in 17 years. Before the war, the Mariners regularly played in the top two flights. Similarly, Blackburn Rovers and Sheffield Wednesday were hoping for a return to their former glory days after playing just their 5th and 4th seasons in the third tier, respectively.
Elsewhere, the Stags were returning to the basement division after their brief flirtation with Division Two for their only time in 1977-78 and AFC Wimbledon, only in their third season in the Football League got relegated back after their promotion last season. Portsmouth won promotion after only their second season in the fourth tier.
No teams were elected out of the league.
Here's the goal that decided it...
Later, Bowles said he'd just had enough of Clough. He called him "a dictator" and said the final straw was that he'd left him out of John Robertson's testimonial. Poor excuse, that, I think.
So, as Forest had finally got their domestic obligations behind them to concentrate on Europe, so will I.
Hamburger SV were not to be denied for long though as they won the title the very next season, beating Union Oberschöneweide 3-0 in Berlin.
In the Nazi era, HSV played in the Nordmark Gauliga, one of 16 regional leagues, often winning the title.
After the war, HSV were dominant in the regional Oberliga Nord, winning it most seasons. On one occasion, in 1960, their regional success was followed by a national championship win which qualified them for the European Cup, in which they reached the semi-final in 1961, losing 1-0 to Barcelona only after a replay.
Their domination of the northern league eventually led them to be included in the inaugural first German Bundesliga in 1963-64.
Hamburg finished a respectable 6th place in that first season.
HSV were always competitive in the West German top tier and as a consequence regularly competed in Europe in the Fairs Cup, UEFA Cup or the Cup Winners Cup. They were runners up in the Cup Winners Cup in 67-68 losing to Milan.
In 1974-75 they qualified for the UEFA Cup and reached the semi-final the following season, losing to FC Bruges. HSV won the German Pokal (Cup) that season, beating Kaiserslautern 2-0 in the final in Frankfurt. This qualified them for the European Cup Winners Cup the next season, which they also won, beating Anderlecht 2-0 in the final.
Here are the highlights...
As holders, Hamburg qualified again for the Cup Winners Cup the following year but were eliminated in the second round this time - Anderlecht got their revenge beating them 3-2 on aggregate.
The following season, with fresh money from the new Japanese club sponsors, Hitachi, HSV were able to splash the cash and buy in superstar Kevin Keegan from the mighty, mighty Liverpool.
After an average first season when Keegan struggled to win over his team mates who were understandably jealous of his massive salary, HSV started to turn things around and in the 1978-79, Hamburg finally won the Bundesliga for the first time. This qualified them for the 1979-80 European Cup, the final of which, of course, we are considering here.
Before their relegation, in 2018, HSV were the only German football club that had never been outside the top flight of their regional league or the nation one.
Imagine the thoughts of Kevin Keegan, then, when Dinamo Tblisi were drawn to play his new club Hamburg SV in the second round.
The USSR, like Iceland, play their football in the summer during a calendar year, so Dinamo Tblisi, like Valur, had won their league back in 1978, finishing four points clear of another Dinamo - from Kyiv.
This was the second, and last, time Dinamo Tblisi won the Soviet "Top" League. The league had been pretty much dominated by four big Moscow clubs, Dyname, Spartak, CSKA and Torpedo. 54% of all titles had gone to those clubs with Dinamo Kyiv leading the resistance from elsewhere.
Twelve more years, and the Soviet Union would be all over. You're not "top" any more!
Keegan played a big part in knocking out the Soviets, scoring in both legs. 57,000 attended the first leg in West Germany, where HSV came from a goal down to win 3-1.
Highlights...
In the second leg in Tblisi, an early goal from Vladimir Gutsaev must have made "our" Kevin wonder if the Soviets were about to dump his team out of the cup, like they had Liverpool, but his goal on 34 minutes restored Hamburg's two goal margin and they'd go on to win 3-2 and 6-3 on aggregate.
Here's a gimpse of that second leg, with some of the weirdest camera angles ever.
I actually visited the stadium in 2018 during my crazy trip to visit 10 former Soviet Republics during the World Cup in Russia 2018...
I had a lovely time in Tblisi - some of the wines were fantastic.
It had been one of the closest title races ever with two Croatian teams battling it out to the final whistle. In the end Split edged out Zagreb on goal difference.
This title put Hajduk Split further ahead of their rivals, Dinamo Zagreb, and one championship closer to Partizan Belgrade as they remained the third most successful team in the 33 year history of the Jugoslav league.
As with the Soviet Union, though, the Jugoslavian experiment with socialist "big brotherhood" didn't have long to go. Soon, Hajduk Split would be compelled (or have the freedom) to compete exclusively against other Croatian clubs.
52,000 watched a tight first leg with HSV securing only a 1-0 lead to take to the beautiful Adriatic coastal city.
Here are the highlights of that first leg...
The second leg was a classic with Hrubesch getting a vital early away goal to give HSV the edge. Vujovic equalised and then Hajduk were awarded a penalty. But instead of equalising the tie, Kargus saved and the next minute, Hamburg went further ahead with Hieronymus - so 3-1 on aggregate at half time.
In the second half, Hajduk got an early goal to make it 3-2 and then pile on the pressure until a Primorac headed made it 3-3 with four minutes to go. Despite all their efforts the Croats couldn't get the vital winning goal, and Hamburg went through on away goals.
Here are some (very poor quality) highlights...
Just a few weeks after my trip to Tblisi, in 2018, I happened to be in Split with my dear wife, where we watched Croatia v France in the World Cup Final. Their stadium today looks more impressive than their recent form.
Real had (yawn) won the Spanish league quite comfortably the season before, finishing four points ahead of Sporting Gijon and six ahead of the others.
This was Real's 19th Spanish championship and (yaaaaawn) it took them ten title wins ahead of second placed Barcelona at this time.
The biggest crowd of the tournament, a staggering 121,106, poured into the Bernabeu Stadium to watch Real Madrid carve out what looked like a comfortable 2-0 win. Both goals were scored by Carlos Alonso González (aka Santillana). They left it late but the lead was enough, surely, for them to hold onto in West Germany to reach the final.
Here are the highlights...
So, two weeks later, as Forest went to Amsterdam, it looked set for a Forest v Real Madrid final - not something to inspire us with great confidence. But, as those witty football pundits often say, nobody showed the script to the Hamburg players. Clearly, they had other ideas.
Hamburg threw themselves at Real from the start and could have scored a couple even before Manny Kaltz netted from the penalty spot in the 10th minute, after Keegan was scythed down in the box. This cut Madrid's lead in half and set up a storming second leg. Hrubesch made it 2-0 with a diving header, equalising the tie, seven minutes later and so all bets were off. Laurie Cunningham, playing in Spain after his summer transfer from West Bromwich Albion, hit the bar with a screamer before pulling one back for Real on the night, putting them 3-2 up and giving them a potentially crucial away goal. But two more from Kaltz and Hrubesch before half time turned the tie on its head. 4-3 they lead, at the interval.
In the second half, HSV missed a number of golden chances to seal the tie before Real had a man sent off. Madrid never really looked like getting on the scoresheet again, something that would have sent them through on away goals. In the end, a last minute goal by Memering clinched the tie for HSV. As news came in that Forest had held out at Ajax, it was all set - Kenny Burns and Larry Lloyd versus Kevin Keegan et al.
Here are the highlights of one of the most titanic of European matches...
And to summarise, here's a video summary of Forest's goals on their way to the final (sorry about the sound track!)
In the days before the final, football journalists everywhere were starting to speculate about the match. How would Forest cope with the threat of Kevin Keegan and the loss of Trevor Francis?
Hamburg were strong favourites especially after the way they disposed of Real Madrid in the semi-final second leg.
If anyone is reading this who was there who did take some photos... ? I know. It's hopeless.
So what DO I remember? The most bizarre, stupid, irrelevant fact - that around the French-Spanish border I went through a town called Irun. Brilliant! That stuck in my mind.
This must have been the route... a ferry to Calais and then train through Paris to Madrid. I must have gone via EuroRail, as it was such a bargain for students.
I remember taking my place in the Forest end of the ground. I stood on the left hand side of the goal about half way down the bank of terrace. I stood on my own. A few of my Forest mates form Kirkby went too but I think they had seats in the stand.
I remember seeing a few of them outside the ground at the end. I have this vague memory of chatting to Ian White, the lovely man that used to drive us to all the away games during the second division days. I hadn't seen him for a while as he'd stopped going so often and I'd been spending more time with my uni mates. If my memory isn't deceiving me completely, Ian was saying that he was "over" all this supporting a club business and that he missed the good old days when Forest were a crap second division team. "All these success supporters. Where were they three years ago?"
Surely, surely, we must have had a few beers in a bar somewhere close by, but I cannot even be certain of that. Maybe we went our separate ways after that. Another strange thing I remember is that I phoned a girl who I fancied in Kirkby at the time. It must have been from a phone booth as, of course, we didn't have mobile phones. Apparently her dad picked up and was not very impressed with this strange chap calling her so late at night from Spain. I even remember her name but I won't spell it out here.
That's it! Pathetic eh?
I used to have the match program too, but I seem to have lost that along the way somewhere.
Anyway... let's go (virtually) to the match itself now and take on board the amazing fact that, due to injuries, mardy players walking out on the club, and, let's be brutally honest, astonishing managerial unpreparedness, Forest only had 4 players on the bench. Can you believe that? We couldn't even find five decent players as substitutes. Jim Montgomery, David Needham, John O'Hare and Bryn Gunn - they were the back up!
Nottingham Forest
1 Peter Shilton, 2 Viv Anderson, 3 Frank Gray, 4 John McGovern, 5 Larry Lloyd, 6 Kenny Burns, 7 Martin O'Neill, 8 Ian Bowyer, 9 Garry Birtles, 10 Gary Mills, 11 John Robertson.
Goals: John Robertson 1.
Substitutions: John O'Hare (13) came on for Gary Mills, Bryn Gunn (12) came on for Frank Gray (9).
Hamburg SV
1 Rudolf Kargus, 2 Manny Kaltz, 3 Peter Nogly, 4 Ditmar Jacobs, 5 Ivan Buljan, 6 Holger Hieronymus, 7 Kevin Keegan, 8 Caspar Memering, 9 Jurgen Milewski, 10 Felix Magath, 11 Willi Reimann.
Substitutions: Horst Hrubesch(12) came on for Holger Hieronymus (6) in the 46th minute.
With so little "up top" to draw upon, I can only stress the importance of Robbo's goal and share some views of the game that I had at the time that have been revised after watching the highlights again.
It's so fitting that it was John Roberston that scored that goal...
I can't let it pass that this was Robbo's 212th consecutive first team appearance for the club. He still had another 27 more games to go from the start of the next, 1980-81, season before he finally missed a game.
Thanks to the Forest twitter feed NFFC40 and a nice piece in the Guardian today I've managed to put together some nice images from the game.
The Forest twitter feed has been a great source of information this season, actually. Thanks to them I've been pointed in the direction of several video sources and photos I wouldn't have found otherwise. And of course, they have access to a lot of inside info I haven't. Their angle has been to report, in "real time - minus forty years ago" what was happening down to the minute goals were scored etc. My angle has been more nostalgic and looking back on the big picture, statistically and historically.
Here's the match in full....
You just have to listen to the moment the final whistle was blown when Brian Moore (bless him) makes one of the biggest goof ups possible in live televised sport...
"... and he's about to blow his whistle ... and Hamburg ... are the champions of Europe again!!! ..."
Oops. Well to be fair, HSV did look like scoring most of the game.
Here are the match highlights...
And here are a few more (very poor quality and still not the whole match though...)
A nice little summary...
I have to be honest. Watching the highlights again from all those years ago one can't help but feel just a bit sorry for Hamburg. They attacked Forest from the start, had most of the possession, devised the vast majority of the openings, created the most clear cut chances, had a goal disallowed that some officials might have allowed, and whereas they had a shot that hit the post and bounced to safety, we had a shot that hit the post and bounced in. But... we were without Trevor Francis and Stan Bowles. I think they would definitely have made a difference. With Francis' fire power up front, HSV would have been far less willing to push men forward and with Bowles in midfield we would have been more creative. But let's give credit to Forest's defensive work. Burns and Lloyd, rightly, got a lot of praise for the way they kept Hamburg out most of the time, but all the midfielders worked and worked and worked. I thought Martin O'Neill stifled the influence of Kevin Keegan as much as anyone. Any accusation of Forest being too physical on Keegan et al can, I think, be countered by similar allegations against the Hamburg back line. Buljan bullied Birtles most of the game, for instance. As for the fact that Peter Shilton made three or four great saves - well he's as much a part of the team as anyone. That's not luck, that's just being part of a great team.
Clough, typically, wasn't embarrassed at Forest's win. He said the next day "We gave Hamburg a lesson in application, determination and pride. They are the good things we don't hear enough about and we take for granted in English football. This has got to be at the very least approaching the most memorable night in my entire career as a soccer manager."
Here's a special edition of a Madrid Sports newspaper the next day...
The headline wasn't very complimentary to Forest. "Nottingham - a Fronton" suggests that Forest were basically a wall - a modern equivalent might be kind of "Forest Park the Bus".
A "fronton" apparently is the name given to the wall against which you bounce the ball in a game called "Basque pelota" which is bit like squash.
And here's the match report in the Guardian...
I don't remember anything about the return journey either. I did get home on the train safely, though. No doubt about that!
So, this is my last "feature" on a Forest player. I do hope I haven't left anyone out. I'll check soon and make amends if I have.
Bryn Gunn was born in Kettering almost exactly a year before me on 21st August 1958. He made his debut for the club, eight months into Brian Clough's rein, in League Cup 1st Round against Rotherham United four days after his 17th birthday. He played left back, taking the place of Frank Clark, who slid across into the back four. He must have done OK because he kept his place for the league game at home to Notts County the following Saturday. It was a bright start to his career as Gunn made fourteen appearances in the league and League Cup in the 1975-76 season. I saw ten of them.
After this promising start, Gunn slipped below the radar for a couple of years, as Forest gained promotion and won the league. In the 1978-79 season he made just one appearance, away at Chelsea - a match Forest won 3-1. Missed that one.
In the season I've just finished covering here, Bryn made five appearances, two in the league (home to Bristol City and Manchester City) and three in the European Cup (Arges Pitesti away, Dynamo Berlin home and the final against Hamburg, of course.) I only missed one of those.
In the next three seasons, Gunn had his best spell for Forest making 33, 43, 39 appearances in all competitions. In the last of those three season, 1982-83 Bryn scored his only league goal for the club. (For a tiny bit of worthless pride... and 1 point, where did he score that goal? - Answer below.) He'd score another in the League Cup two seasons later. His last appearance for Forest was playing in the center at No 4 on the last game of the season in 1983-84 at home to Manchester United. Forest won 2-0 to pip them for 3rd place in the league.
The 1985-86 season was his last for the club, although he made no more appearances for them.Instead, he had three loan spells with Shrewsbury Town (in their ten year spell in the second tier), Walsall (challenging for promotion from the third) and Mansfield Town (on their way to promotion from the fourth), where he made 9, 6 and 5 appearances respectively.
Bryn Gunn left Forest at the age of 28 and moved closer to his home town of Kettering when he joined Peterborough United for the start of the 1986-87 season.
The Posh were a mid-table fourth division side that season. Gunn made 160 appearances for Peterborough for the next three season and was almost an ever present for his time there.
His final club was Chesterfield, also in the fourth division, for whom Gunn made over hundred appearances.
Gunn's last league appearance was on 26th October 1991, 16 years and two months after his first. For another point and an even smaller bit of personal pride... where did he play his last league game? (Answer below) So Bryn finally hung up his boots at the age of 34 having made a very respectable 438 appearances in a career lasting over 16 years, 38% of them for a team that won the European Cup twice.
So I'll start with a list of all the games his 212 consecutive match run. It's entirely appropriate because Forest's best spell almost completely coincides with Robbo being in the team.
No coincidence there, I think.
I went to 156 of those games, approximately 73% of them altogether. 104 were at the City Ground, only one of which I missed, for my sister's wedding. 100 were away games of which I saw 47. (I really slackened off there. Towards the end I only went to one out of the last eighteen away games.) 8 were on neutral grounds, of which I saw 6.
Forest won 55% of all these games (70% of home games) and lost only 16% of them. They scored 363 goals and conceded 164.
Most of these games were in the first division but, of course, they did well in all competitions.
Here's a table of all thirty players who played for Forest during Robbo's run. As you can see, Viv Anderson is No 2 (in more senses than one) in the list, appearing alongside Robbo on 200 occasions. John McGovern was No 3, Larry Lloyd No 4, Peter Shilton 5, Martin O'Neill 6, Tony Woodcock 7, Ian Bowyer 8, Kenny Burns 9, Garry Birtles 10 and Peter Withe 11.
The table not only shows how many games the players played, but how many of them I saw. I didn't realise it, but I saw Chris Woods' entire Forest career. The table also shows the goals players scored in those matches and, which of them I saw. Again, I never realised that I saw all of Larry Lloyd's, Archie Gemmill's and Stan Bowles' goals for Forest.
I also included the players ages. From Gary Mills the youngest, through to Frank Clark, the oldest, there was a range of over 18 years with the average at 27.7.
All this got me wondering about shirt numbers and who wore the most different ones after Ian Bowyer who (surely) would have worn the most?
It shouldn't have been surprising, with the benefit of hindsight, but John O'Hare also wore a lot of different shirt numbers too, although two of them were both technically the same - as substitute. Most notably, according to my stats, Viv Anderson wore the No 2 shirt in every game, and Tony Woodcock wore 10 153 times. No surprise about Peter Shilton, then.
Let's just remind ourselves what this meant in terms of trophies won.
In the times B.C. this is what Forest's trophy cabinet looked like...
That's two trophies in 110 years, one every 55 years.
In the "Honours Board" of English Football Clubs in 1977, Forest were in the top 30, having won those two F.A. Cups, but two pieces of silverware in 110 years isn't great and Forest had been less successful than Bury, Old Etonians, The Wanderers and... Derby County!
In the three years I've covered here Forest added six pieces of silverware, two per season.
Now, I can't really count the Charity Shield in the "Honours Board" but three years later Forest had moved up 16 places into the top 12.
In terms of European Cup success, Forest were among the greats of Europe now having won the premier club trophy twice. Only three clubs had won it more - Real Madrid, Ajax Amsterdam and Bayern Munich.
The silly thing is that we took it all for granted at the time. I should have known that the great years we'd seen would soon change but, to be honest, I was getting older and my interests were moving into other areas anyway, and probably have would have done so even if Forest had somehow carried on at that incredible level.
I was about to leave university and start my career - at first as a teacher, in Doncaster, so it was going to be harder to watch Forest in any case. Also, finally, I was going to have my own girl friend so, needing to catch up for lost time, my passion for football was going to have serious competition for the first time. Soon, I'd get into my Lithuanian roots adding further distractions and this would lead me to meeting the love of my life and starting a family - the ultimate reason not to go to football matches.
So, I guess, looking back, it couldn't have been timed better really. I had the indulgence of Forest's three best ever years at exactly the right time.
Putting it into life's context, when I moved south to work at British Airways I fell in love and married my wife and we started our family in High Wycombe. Amazingly I had another period of luck there as I had another few great years watching the start of Martin O'Neill's managerial career at Wycombe Wanderers.
Later, having got interested in human evolution, through this weird thing called the "aquatic ape hypothesis" I did a master's degree at UCL and decided to continue it at PhD level and had the opportunity to emigrate to Perth, Australia, to study it here at UWA. Again I had another bit of football luck having started to watch Perth Glory just before they won their first ever NSL title. And in the last few years, I have started following another local club, Perth Azzurri.
It's easy to forget that Forest returned to Wembley five times in just three years, winning on four occasions. The first two were within three weeks of each other.
So, it wasn't just a flash in the pan. For 15 years, Forest had the fourth best points tally in the English League, behind only (of course) the mighty, mighty Liverpool Arsenal and the soon-to-be-mighty Manchester United.
But enough about all this. I have to draw the line somewhere at that is right.... here!
At No 19 was a weird song that will bring back memories to those old enough: Jona Lewie (aka John Lewis, from Southampton) and "You'll always find me in the kitchen at parties".
A bit of disco at No 14. "Back together again" from Roberta Flack and Danny Hathaway.
A bit more to my taste, at No 11, "The Beat" with the classic "Mirror in the Bathroom".
Gary Numan was at No 7 with "We are Glass".
My wife would never forgive me if I left out No 6, Roxy Music and "Over You".
One of the classic of the era, The Specials' "Rat Race". I've still seen this band more than any other (not that that's saying much as I'm not a big concert-goer.)
... and as "Specials Special" here's the B side...
A song very much of it's age was "Lipps Inc"s "Funky Town" at No 3.
One great bit of nostalgia from the time that, oddly, wasn't in the charts but was definitely out, was the Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark (OMD) song "Messages". Thanks to "Boro" for the heads up on that one.
No 1 was the theme from M*A*S*H. I often watched the program and liked the tune but I much prefer the Manic's version that they released in 1992.
Now to end with a bit of tely...
I was astonished to find out that on June 6th 1980, the very last episode of the kids programme, "Magpie" was shown. I thought it had gone on longer than that.
Here's few theme tunes to get you going...
Blankety Blank, hosted by Terry Wogan had only been on a year but would run until 1990. Here's the first episode...
One of the greats at the time was the BBC's sci fi, Blake's 7...
The best TV Comedy in 1980, in my humble opinion, was "Not the Nine O'Clock News".
But, getting back to the football theme, most Saturday morning in my youth, I'd spend watching the ITV's attempt at "silly TV," Tiswas, starring Lenny Henry, Sally James and Chris Tarrant. Remember the phantom flan flinger or spit the dog?
But, of course I have to finish on the most important TV programme at the time... Match of the Day.
Here's one from October 1980, in the following season. Hosted by Bob Wilson, as Jimmy Hill was reporting on a meeting of Football League chairmen. There's a nice spread of matches in this recording, Chelsea v Newcastle United (from the Second Division,) Burnley v Brentford, playing in the Third Division and Crystal Palace v Leeds United in the First. There's also the Goal of the Month competition which included a nice one from Gary Mills at home to West Bromwich Albion.
Although at one time I used to regularly get over 2,000 views of these posts (true, they could have just clicked once and then closed the page down straight away) but that number dropped considerably when the Forest fans' Facebook site got taken down and at least three new ones, with far fewer fans, took its place. This season I've averaged less than 100 views per post. Yes, you might well ask - so why do you bother? Well, at least it's helped me to remind myself of three exciting years watching Forest playing at unimaginable heights, going toe to toe with the very best clubs in the world. Never mind. Hopefully these pages will be around for a few years for anyone who is nostalgic for the days when football was pretty open - imagine an unfashionable club struggling in the second tier today winning the European Champions League in two years time - it's impossible, right? Those days are gone, perhaps forever.
Anyway, in this post, I give my small tribute to three Forest full backs, each one relatively unsung, starting with Colin Barrett. I should have covered his career in the April post as he was let go at the end of the month, but I didn't notice in time. Later, it'll be Frankie Gray's turn, who was one of Clough/Taylor's great signings - the perfect replacement for Frank Clark at the perfect time. Although he wasn't with us for long, Frankie definitely deserves a mention here. Towards the end, surely the most unsung of all the unsung heroes, Bryn Gunn, who came on for about six minutes of the final and so has a European Cup winners medal to show to his family. Whatever happened to him?
Colin Barrett's career was cut tragically short after he badly damaged his knee ligaments in the very next game after Forest's earth shattering 2-0 win at home to Liverpool in 1978. The match that sent us on our way to winning two European Cups. And so, I take a bit of a look at cruciate knee ligaments, how they can get injured and how modern surgery can fix it - sadly techniques too late for Cloughie who suffered a similar injury in 1962. Continuing the anatomical theme, I'll also take a look at Achilles tendon injuries - like the one that shot Francis out of the European Cup in the dying minutes of a stroll in the park against Crystal Palace. With Francis out of contention, the last thing Forest needed was a most unprofessional episode from our talented midfield player, Stan Bowles, ruling him out of the squad too.
As we get to the pointy end of the season I'll show how the FA Cup semi final marathon between Arsenal and Liverpool was finally resolved and how the Hammers beat the Gunners at Wembley to lift the trophy, how Arsenal also lost the Cup Winners Cup final too and how Eintracht Frankfurt won the all-German UEFA Cup. I'll describe how Manchester United's long title challenge finally fizzled out leaving Liverpool to win the league for the 12th time. This was already four more than Arsenal and so they continued to ruin the reputation of the English league for being an open one. I can't forget that Forest also won the County Cup in May 1980 but no-one else seems to care. So there's a quick goodbye to that competition - maybe prematurely.
It was Robbo's goal though, in Madrid, that will forever stick in the memory from forty years ago even though his consecutive run of first class games - a total, after that match, running at 212 - TWO HUNDRED AND TWELVE - is a much more impressive achievement. I am ashamed to admit I missed Robbo's low key testimonial (organised on a Friday night against second division Leicester City - wow, thanks!) and that I missed quite a lot of the away games as the season ended. At least I didn't miss much. Forest's away form, in the league at least, was relegation standard, even though at home they couldn't lose, finishing with eight straight wins.
As this is the last post in the 40 years ago series, I'll put in some summary stats for the whole period and remind people that Forest's glorious period didn't actually end here. Under Brian Clough, Forest would stay a force in English football for another ten years or so.
I sign off with my usual musical nostalgia and, a bit of 80s tely too. Ok. I hope some people enjoy reading this... if so, please share the link and remember you can search the entire blog by using the menu at the top.
Memorias de un magnífica muralla en Madrid en mayo por Nottingham Forest
Memories of a magnificent wall in Madrid in May by Nottingham Forest
A Tribute to Colin Barrett
Just slipping under the radar in my last post, on 29th April to be precise, another unsung hero of the so-called "miracle men" was quietly let go. So, to make amends, I have to include my short tribute to the man here first, before we get into the events of May 1980.Clough and Taylor were always supportive of players that gave 100% while they were at the club, but they were not at all sentimental about letting them go once they'd decided their best years were over. And this seems to have been the case with Colin Barrett, who's football career was cut cruelly short by a nasty injury against Middlesbrough, resulting in damage to ligaments in his knee - in a very similar way to those that ended Cloughie's playing career in 1962. It happened just ten days after the highlight of Barrett's career, a fantastic volley to put Forest 2-0 up in the European Cup First Round clash with Liverpool at the City Ground - a result that really set the platform for the Reds' amazing European success I've tried to document in these pages.
Colin Barrett was born on 3rd August 1952 in Cheadle Heath, near Stockport. He was one of those late developers - players who weren't picked up as gifted by some scout or other when they were just out of nappies. He worked at the Hawker Siddeley Aircraft Factory after leaving school and played amateur football for Cheadle Heath Nomads. But in May 1970 he was finally spotted and signed for Manchester City, still 17 years old at the time.
Barrett made his first-team debut aged 20 on 19th August 1972, having got his place instead of the injured Tony Book. It was a good start. City beat Norwich 3–0 at home. He was always a versatile defender, playing fullback or center back. He played in both legs of the 1973-74 Football League Cup semi-final defeat of Plymouth Argyle, but he was never a regular over the next four years.
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| Male Model Barrett |
Barrett's last game for City was at Leicester on 31st January 1976. He played in 65 competitive first team games (53 in the league). His only goal came against Scunthorpe United, a 6–0 win, at home, on 10th September 1974 in the League Cup.
Now aged 23, and a little frustrated, he was swooped upon by Brian Clough and joined Forest, initially, on loan. Colin made his debut for Forest on 13th March 1976 in our 1–0 home win against Fulham. It was my 70th Forest home match and Barrett played alongside Sammy Chapman in the back four. Barrett completed his move in April 1976 for a £29,000 fee and made 10 appearances for the reds before the end of the season.
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| Barrett came to the City Ground in 1976 |
Barrett's best season was undoubtedly that of Forest's amazing return to the top flight when they won the league at the first attempt. Now aged 25, Barrett displaced Frank Clark as a regular at left back. He played in 35 of Forest's league games and played in both legs of the semi-final win, this time against Leeds United. Unfortunately, he missed out in the final due to a stress fracture and Frank Clark came back in.
As champions, Barrett was a first choice part of the team early in the season. He played at Wembley as Forest beat Ipswich Town 5–0 in Charity Shield. But probably the highlight of Colin's career came on Wednesday, 13th September in the very awkward first round match against Liverpool in the European Cup. Barrett scored the second goal, a cracking volley from short range, in the 2–0 home leg win in the first leg. It came in the 86th minute. Barrett drove home a right foot volley of a knockdown by Tony Woodcock.
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| Colin Barrett blasts home Forest's second against the mighty mighty Liverpool in September 1978 |
Murphy's Law struck though. Just 10 days after this career high, came a crushing career-ending low. Barrett was playing left back at home to Middlesbrough. It was the Saturday before the European Cup second leg at Anfield. Barrett describes the incident: "I pushed the ball out and stretched for it, and John Mahoney hit me from the side. I tried to walk because Cloughie is shouting, “Get up”. Then the ball came to me, I put it from right to left, and I just fell over, collapsed. I didn’t know how serious it was. In the hospital they told me my knee ligaments had gone and I was having surgery at Harlow Wood near Mansfield. ‘I had my leg in plaster for six weeks, which they did in those days, then went for a week’s rehabilitation. I tried to come back and it was too soon. It kept going."
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| His challenge ended Barrett's playing career |
Although I must have witnessed it, I am ashamed to say I have no memory of the incident whatsoever. One can only presume the challenge was accidental. Mahoney had been a regular in Tony Waddington's Stoke City team that almost won the league in 1974-75, playing alongside Alan Hudson. Like, Peter Shilton, it was the thought of playing at Mansfield's Field Mill that persuaded him to move to Middlesbrough after Stoke got relegated.
Anyway, back to Barrett. Colin had to listen to Forest's heroic 0-0 draw at Anfield from his hospital bed and only played 12 further senior competitive games in his career the last of which was less than two years after the Boro game. He eventually made his comeback to the Forest first team in March and he played seven more games, including the 1979 Football League Cup Final 3–2 win against Southampton, before his knee went again. He also played in Forest's pulsating semi-final against F.C. Koln en route to winning the 1979 European Cup Final but his injury prevented him being considered for the final.
So, like it was for Cloughie himself, torn knee ligaments ended his career. It's not surprising this happens so often when you consider the quite gracile looking anatomy in the context of some of the crunching tackles that used to come in those days (and still do, I suppose.)
In 1962, when Cloughie's had his injury (for Sunderland v Bury on Boxing Day at Roker Park) there was no hope of any surgery to fix this kind of injury. These days, surgery is much more sophisticated and reliable. A recent study suggests that 72% of (male) footballers who suffer ACL injuries recover to play again within a year, over 60% at the same or higher level than before. Perhaps most famously, Ruud Van Nistlerooy and Alan Shearer both came back after ACL surgery. I guess Colin Barrett's injury came a bit too early for these advances in surgery to have been available.
It's remarkable to consider what actually must go on when a player goes under the knife for this kind of thing.
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| A new artificial ligament is screwed into place |
So Colin Barrett's last game for Forest was at home to Manchester United a week after the Köln game, on 18th April 1979. Forest drew 1-1 in front of 33,830 fans. He did go to Olympic Stadium in Munich for the final but didn’t feel part of celebrations after the 1-0 win over Malmö. That must have been one very miserable dressing room with Barrett, O'Neill and Gemmill all grumpy about missing the final through injury. Barrett later said "When you miss finals, I’ve said this a million times, you might as well be sitting at home,’ he says. ‘All you want to do is play. I say, “I’ve not won the European Cup.” Everybody says, “Why?” I have this feeling that if you don’t cross that white line in the final you’ve not won it. It is old-fashioned." Forest did give Barrett a medal and miniature trophy to show for his contribution though. I'm sure he's proud of that today.
At the end of the 1979-80 Barrett joined Swindon Town but he knew his playing days were over. "Finished at 29" as he says. There weren't many jobs going for ex-footballers so he moved back to Southwell (pronounced "suthull") because Nottingham had been ‘where times were good’. After working in a pub, making snooker tables ‘at the height of the craze’, and ‘hating’ a job back at Forest on the commercial team selling lottery tickets, he started to paint the outside of his house. He turned out to be pretty good at it and so that's what he did for years after that.
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| Colin Barrett at the height of his short career |
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| Barrett as a pundit more recently |
In 1979/80 he only played for Forest in non-competitive games. Overall Barrett played 93 competitive games (scoring 8 goals) and 128 first team games (scoring 11 goals) in total for Forest.
FA Cup Semi-Final Marathon Finally Ends
So, onto the events of May 1980... On the very first day of the month, in the F.A. Cup semi-final, Arsenal finally overcame Liverpool at the 4th attempt to reach FA Cup final. The match was played at Highfield Road, Coventry.This was the first time, in the F.A. Cup's (then) 119 year history that a semi final had required three replays because of previously drawn games. The only other time a 4th replay was required, back in 1898-99, was because the third replay had to be abandoned at half time because of a crush in the crowd and dark conditions at Fallowfield Stadium in Manchester.
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| Ah... those F.A. Cup semi final replays... them wo't' days! |
I'd never heard of it either.
Apparently, as well as hosting a number of Rugby League Finals it was actually the venue of the F.A. Cup Final itself in 1982-93 when Wolves beat Everton 1-0. It also hosted one other semi final before the one that got abandoned.
The ground was bought by Manchester University in the early 1960s and was still being used for sports until the mid 90s. It's now been developed into student accommodation.
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| Fallowfield, Manchester |
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| Fallowfield Stadium, Manchester. Venue of Two FA Cup Semi Finals and the 1892-93 Final |
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| Semi-Final Tie Pie - a quarter went to replays in those days |
Here's an amazing image of the Liverpool v Sheffield United semi-final - 3rd (or 4th?) replay at the ram shackled old Baseball Ground. The Blades won 1-0 to reach the final where they would, ironically, face Derby County at Crystal Palace in front of 74,000 fans. United won 4-1 to win the F.A. Cup for the first time. Question for football nerds - who were the team that had won the F.A. Cup the season before?
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| 3rd (or was it the 4th?) replay Sheffield United v Liverpool 1899, at the Baseball Ground, Derby |
So, Brian Talbot's 11th minute goal finally separated the two teams and it would be Arsenal that would go onto Wembley to meet their London rivals, West Ham United.
Here are the match highlights...
Final Saturday of the League Program - Match 399: Saturday, 3rd May 1980, Division One.
Nottingham Forest 4 Crystal Palace 0 (City Ground 198, Nottingham Forest 281, Crystal Palace 4) Attendance 24,582.
Two days later it was the final full league program of the season and Forest's penultimate home game. I do remember this one.Before the match, there was an announcement that Larry Lloyd had been voted Forest's player of the season. Larry had been an ever present and, at the age of 32 was playing some of the best football of his career. One only has to read some of the compliments of his team mates to appreciate that he deserved the award but I can't help wondering how poor Forest's away form was that season after being so solid in recent years, and wondering whether it was therefore appropriate to give the award to a defender.
I was sat up in the new "Executive" stand on a brilliantly sunny Saturday afternoon as I flicked through the match day programme.
Martin O'Neill returned to the side for Gary Mills.
Nottingham Forest
1 Peter Shilton, 2 Viv Anderson, 3 Frank Gray, 4 John McGovern, 5 Larry Lloyd, 6 Kenny Burns, 7 Martin O'Neill, 8 Stan Bowles, 9 Garry Birtles, 10 Trevor Francis, 11 John Robertson.
Goals: Larry Lloyd 1, Trevor Francis 2, John Robertson 1.
Substitutions: Gary Mills (12) came on for Frank Gray(3).
Crystal Palace
1 John Burridge, 2 Paul Hinshelwood, 3 Kenny Samson, 4 Peter Nicholas, 5 Jim Cannon, 6 Billy Gilbert, 7 Jerry Murphy, 8 Gerry Francis, 9 Ian Walsh, 10 Mike Flanagan, 11 Vince Hillaire
Forest were totally dominant against a pretty good Crystal Palace side who had started the season so well and beaten us down at Selhurst Park back in December. In May though, Forest were 3-0 up at half time and were playing some great stuff. Francis, again, was on fire.
In the second John Robertson made it 4-0 and Forest were cruising to yet another home victory - their seventh consecutive one. Francis was playing another blinder and it started to look like Forest were assuring themselves of a place in next season UEFA Cup, as insurance against losing to Hamburg in Madrid in 25 days time.
Then with about ten minutes left on the clock, Francis received the ball in front of the Palace penalty area and looked up and started one of his blistering runs. Suddenly, though, he stopped dead in his tracks. From where I was sat it looked very serious from the second I saw it. Francis later said that he literally thought that someone had shot him in the ankle from the crowd, the pain was so sudden and sharp.
Francis' achilles tendon had ruptured and he was led off the field. Forest had to play out the game with ten men as Frank Gray had earlier been replaced by Gary Mills and only one sub was allowed in those days. Another injury worry to add to the list.
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Elsewhere, Liverpool finally clinched their second successive league title as they beat Aston Villa 4-1 at Anfield whilst Manchester United lost 2-0 at Leeds. It had been a good title race, but Manchester United's long period without an English Championship (then at an unlucky 13 years) was set to go on for a while yet. In fact this was just about the half way mark of their most barren period. You might remember they'd finally win the title again in 1992-93 which would be the first of thirteen in the next 21 seasons. The era of the English Football League being open was well and truly closing.
Meanwhile Leicester City won the Second Division title with Birmingham City and Sunderland promoted too. In the Third Division Sheffield Wednesday clinched their promotion too, in front of 32,734.
At least Man U finished top of the current league (last three home/away) table.
And Forest's home form continued to be good enough to be in championship contention.
The table... almost complete now.
Here are the highlights from Elland Road - Leeds United 2 Manchester United 0.
And here's how Liverpool clinched the title with a 4-1 win over Aston Villa.
Trevor Francis's tragic injury
Francis on form...
It is no exaggeration to say that in Trevor Francis, Forest had one of the best strikers in the world at the time. After all, they had smashed the British transfer record when they paid about £1,000,000 for him (less than a year and a quarter before.) Francis was, at this point, not quite half way through his time at the club and he'd certainly hit the best of his form for them.
Since 23rd February Francis had played 16 games for Forest, if you include the Palace match. In that time he'd scored 11 goals, at a 69% strike rate. Now his overall scoring rate for Forest during his 2.5 years spell wasn't all that spectacular (37 goals in 82 games, around 45%) so this was, in comparative terms, his golden spell for the Reds.
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| Francis is on fire, your defence is petrified |
Put another way, Francis scored almost 30% of his goals at Forest in 20% of his games during the period up to the Palace game.
Achilles agony
This tendon gets its name from a Greek soldier in the Trojan war (you may remember, Ajax's cousin.) He was the best, biggest, bravest, cleverest, strongest soldier but was bizarrely shot by an arrow through his heel (by another Greek legend called Paris). How ironic. Such an invincible hero in all parts of his body - except his bloody heel! Hence the term "Achilles' heel" has come to mean a point of weakness, especially in someone or something with an otherwise strong constitution.
The Achilles tendon is also called the calcaneal tendon because it joins the calf muscle (gostrocnemius - from Latin modern Latin, from Greek gastroknēmia ‘calf of the leg’, from gaster, gastr- ‘stomach’ + knēmē ‘leg’ (from the bulging shape of the calf).) to the heel bone (the calcaneus).
The muscle is termed a plantar flexor of foot and flexes the knee used in running. Unfortunately for Trevor Francis, too much strain must have been put on it in the 80th minute at the City Ground on the 3rd May 1980.
The surgeons who operated on Trevor's tendon must have sen something like this...
The procedure, compared to an ACL reconstruction, is at least fairly straightforward, if agonising to consider.
Francis would be out for 231 days, that's until 20th December 1980, well into the next season. His return match was a 3-1 home win against newly promoted Sunderland. Forest won 3-1 in front of 23,151. Trevor scored.
I must admit when I was trying to remember about Trevor Francis and his contribution to Forest's double European Cup success, I'd got it in my mind that there'd been a kind of perverse symmetry here. In 1978-79, he'd definitely missed all Forest's games on their way to the final, but played a vital role in the deciding match, helping them to beat Malmo in Munich. But I'd managed to convince myself that in 1979-80 it was the opposite: he'd played brilliantly on the run up to the final but then, thanks to this tragic injury, missed out.
In fact, the truth (of course - this is my memory we're talking about here) wasn't quite like that. In fact on Forest's run to the 1980 final, Francis had only figured in the last two of the four rounds. He'd played in both legs against Dynamo Berlin in the quarter final, and both in the semi-final against Ajax Amsterdam but he missed both the Oster Vaxjo and Arges Pitesti ties.
Anyway, poor ol' Trev.
~
After the final Saturday of the season there were just six games outstanding in the first division - these days they'd have been forced to be played before the final Saturday of the season but in 1980 people seemed to be more trusting.
So - six games to go, on six different days. The first was on the following Monday. Forest had three to play, as did Arsenal. Wolves and Middlesbrough had two to go. Everton just one as did Liverpool.
Monday, 5th May, Arsenal 0 Nottingham Forest 0
On the following Monday, Forest played one of the toughest fixtures of the season, at Highbury. Since returning to the First Division, Forest's record there had been played two, lost two. Arsenal were higher in the league than Forest in the league and were on better form in the last few games too.
Arsenal's home form hadn't been great, but Forest's away from had been terrible. Arsenal and Forest were both going for UEFA Cup places now that hopes of the title had disappeared. It didn't look good. Surely, another defeat was looming here.
I wish I could say I had gone... but I can't.
I wish I could say I had gone... but I can't.
Ian Bowyer stepped in for Stan Bowles and Gary Mills tried to fill Trevor Francis' boots up front.
Arsenal
1 Pat Jennings, 2 John Devine, 3 Sammy Nelson, 4 Brian Talbot, 5 David O'Leary, 6 Willie Young, 7 Liam Brady, 8 Paul Vaessen, 9 Frank Stapleton, 10 David Price, 11 Graham Rix.
Substitutions: John Hollins (12) came on for Frank Stapleton (9).
Nottingham Forest
1 Peter Shilton, 2 Viv Anderson, 3 Frank Gray, 4 John McGovern, 5 Larry Lloyd, 6 Kenny Burns, 7 Martin O'Neill, 8 Ian Bowyer, 9 Garry Birtles, 10 Gary Mills, 11 John Robertson.
Attendance 34,632
Perhaps surprisingly, considering their record away from Nottingham, Forest managed to avoid defeat for consecutive away games for only the third time of the season, the last time being back in early October. Contrast that with their title winning first season in Division One in 1977-78 when they only lost consecutive away games once, or the following season, 1978-79 when they never did.
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| Gary Mills, in for Trevor Francis |
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| ... but no substitute |
I can't find any video highlights but here's a match day report...
The point had little affect on the title, but both Arsenal and Forest just had two games to go now.
Tuesday, 6th May The Notts. F.A. County Cup final
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| Notts F. A. County Cup |
It seems staggering today, when big clubs (and some not so big) won't risk playing their best XI even for an F.A. Cup Quarter Final, that Forest played yet another game, the very next night. It was the final of the Notts Football Association Cup in the oldest, and most local, derby in league football, and as always Clough picked pretty much his best XI.
It is interesting to read his programme notes, though, which show he is clearly a little frustrated at being asked to play the fixture out at that point in time, rather than deferring the final to the start of the next season.
It is interesting to read his programme notes, though, which show he is clearly a little frustrated at being asked to play the fixture out at that point in time, rather than deferring the final to the start of the next season.
I am ashamed to say that I didn't go.
Only Jim Montgomery could be said to have not been a first teamer, and he was no slouch of course.
Nottingham Forest
1 Jim Montgomery, 2 Viv Anderson, 3 Frank Gray, 4 John O’Hare, 5 Larry Lloyd, 6 David Needham 7 Martin O’Neill, 8 Ian Bowyer, 9 Kenny Burns, 10 Stan Bowles, 11 John Robertson
Forest won 2-0 John O'Hare and John Robertson scorers.
Attendance 8,339
Notts F.A. County Cup RIP?
As far as I am aware this was the last time Forest played in the County Cup. I guess now they were one of the best clubs in Europe, they decided they were too good for such trivial competitions but I remain quite sad about it. I always thought the tournament should have actually been expanded to include non-league teams too. Instead it seems to have been shut down. I wrote to the Notts F.A. about this and asked them for more information but they never replied. If anyone knows some more history about the County Cup than the little I have below, please get in touch.
All I've been able to dig up about its history comes from a Forest programme of a County Cup Final at the City Ground in May 1970. It was only my second ever visit to watch Forest.
All I've been able to dig up about its history comes from a Forest programme of a County Cup Final at the City Ground in May 1970. It was only my second ever visit to watch Forest.
Mansfield Town beat Forest than night 1-0 with a Dudley Roberts header in the Trent End so the next final was at Field Mill. If I remember rightly Notts County beat Forest in the semi that year to play the Stags. But I have no memory or record of any of the results since then.
Oh well.. bye bye County Cup, I suppose.
The same night, another of the remaining first division games was played. Having won the league on Saturday, Liverpool played out their last league fixture at Ayresome Park and lost 1-0.
Wednesday 7th May - UEFA Cup Final First Leg
The UEFA Cup Final had paired two West German sides together in the final, Borussia Moenchengladbach and Eintracht Frankfurt.
The first leg was played at the Bökelbergstadion, Mönchengladbach and the home side won 3-2.
Here are the match highlights...
Three nights after the County Cup final, another game, another full strength side. On the Friday night Forest played their last league game of the season at home to Everton.
I did go to this and, it was my 400th match.
400 matches - another landmark of fanaticism reached
Despite slacking off a bit towards the end and missing quite a few away games, the 1979-80 season was my most fanatical season to date. I went to 68 games altogether, a figure I have never got close to in the 40 years that followed, although I have been to 49 games in a season three times since then: 1980-81, 1993-94 and, I'm proud to say, last season too, 2018-19.
Match 400: Friday, 9th May 1980, Division One.
Nottingham Forest 1 Everton 0 (City Ground 199, Nottingham Forest 282, Everton 6) Attendance 22,112.
I have absolutely no memory of the game but I think I must have sat up in the new "Executive" Stand again.
Stan Bowles returned to the side in place of Ian Bowyer who took his place back on the subs bench. Ironically, this would be Bowles' last game for the club as he was about to have a big row with Cloughie and so would miss out on the chance to play in the European Cup final.
Sharp would make 322 league appearances for the club until 1991, scoring 111 goals.
It had been a terrible season the "the Toffies" as they finished 19th, just one place above relegated Bristol City. The margin was only four points although Everton had the better goal difference. It was their worst position in the league since they returned to the first division in 1954. Their only silver lining was a good cup F.A. Cup run - reaching the semi final. It was a surprising down turn, after being title contenders the previous couple of seasons.
Nottingham Forest
1 Peter Shilton, 2 Viv Anderson, 3 Frank Gray, 4 John McGovern, 5 Larry Lloyd, 6 Kenny Burns, 7 Martin O'Neill, 8 Stan Bowles, 9 Garry Birtles, 10 Gary Mills, 11 John Robertson.
Goals: Viv Anderson 1.
Substitutions: Ian Bowyer (12) came on for Garry Birtles(9).
Everton
1 George Wood, 2 John Gidman, 3 John Bailey, 4 Michael Lyons, 5 Billy Wright, 6 Trevor Ross, 7 Gary Stanley, 8 Bob Latchford, 9 Graeme Sharp, 10 Asa Hartford, 11 Eamon O'Keefe.
Again, no video - but here's the match report.
So, now there were just three games to go...
Forest's form was now pretty good as they had actually drawn their last two away games.
And with yet another home win, that made it seven consecutive home league wins on the trot, surely their best ever. (Sorry, I can't be bothered to check!)
End of the season at the City Ground - eight wins on the trot in all competitions.
That really was a great home record. If their away form had only been half decent, Forest would surely have challenged for the title.
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| Best League Crowds at the City Ground - and the worst, two of the last three home games. |
The following day was F. A. Cup Final Day and the all-London affair between Arsenal and West Ham United.
Saturday, 10th May. The 1979-80 F. A. Cup Final
I don't remember where I watched this game but it was probably in the Junior Common Room at Sherwood Hall at Nottingham University. It wasn't a great final and was decided by an early low glancing header in front of goal by Trevor Brooking.It's interesting to note how John Motson spotted the goal better and quicker than Brian Moore in the two TV rival's commentaries...
Here's Brian Moore's take on the goal...
... and here's John Motson...
1-0 to the BBC.
It was West Ham United's third F.A. Cup win. Their only Cup Final defeat was when they played Bolton Wanders in the 1922-23 final, the very first one at Wembley which may have been watched by over 200,000 spectators. Since then, the Hammers have only made it to one more final, the one against Liverpool played at the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff in 2006. That final, like the one before it, (Arsenal v Manchester United, also in Cardiff) was decided on penalties after extra time. Ironic, after Arsenal and Liverpool had need three replays to decide the tie in a semi final forty years ago.
So, football nerds, which team had won the F. A. Cup most in 1980? Not West Ham. Not Arsenal. Not Liverpool. Not Manchester United. And while you have your thinking cap on, which three teams had won it most? Answer coming up soon...
So, who had won the Cup most in 1980? Aston Villa with 7 wins. Next, in joint second place with six wins each.... Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle United. How refreshing to have a major competition (yes, the F.A. Cup is a a major competition, you young dudes! - the oldest in the world, no less) shared by clubs outside the modern boring greediership oligarchy.
Who's won it most today?
Arsenal with 13 wins, followed by Manchester United's 12, followed by Spurs and Chelsea with eight each. Of course, neither Villa, Blackburn nor Newcastle have won it in the last 40 years.
Forest's Trip to Brest
Practically everyone interested in football in England was watching the events at Wembley on 10th May, but in typical Clough & Taylor style, that did not include the Forest players. They were off to France on a trip to Bretagne (or Brittany), in the western most tip, to play an exhibition match against Stade Brestois, a club that had just been relegated from the French first division.A decent crowd of around 5,800 watched a full-strength Forest side beat a Brest team that had been strengthened by a few loanees
John McGovern scored the only goal, and here are the highlights...
1 Peter Shilton, 2 Viv Anderson, 3 Frank Gray, 4 John McGovern, 5 Larry Lloyd, 6 Kenny Burns, 7 Martin O’Neill, 8 Stan Bowles, 9 Garry Birtles, 10 Gary Mills, 11 John Robertson.
There was no rest for the wicked and Forest played again two days later in their last league game of the season.
Monday, 12th May
Wolverhampton Wanderers 3 Nottingham Forest 1
Molineux 21,725
And, of course, how else to end this season than with yet another away defeat. Again, I am ashamed to admit I didn't go, although I probably could have. Football fatigue, maybe?
Ian Bowyer came back in for Stan Bowles and John O'Hare took Gary Mills' place up front in the No 10 shirt trying to be the new Trevor Francis.
Wolves were unchanged.
Wolverhampton Wanderers
1 Mick Kearns, 2 Geoff Palmer, 3 Derek Parkin, 4 Peter Daniel, 5 Emlyn Hughes, 6 George Berry, 7 Kenny Hibbitt, 8 Colin Brazier, 9 Andy Gray, 10 John Richards, 11 Melvyn Eves.
Goals: Geoff Palmer 1, Kenny Hibbitt 1 (pen.), John Richards 1.
Nottingham Forest
1 Peter Shilton, 2 Viv Anderson, 3 Frank Gray, 4 John McGovern, 5 Larry Lloyd, 6 Kenny Burns, 7 Martin O'Neill, 8 Ian Bowyer, 9 Garry Birtles, 10 John O'Hare, 11 John Robertson.
Goals : Martin O'Neill 1.
Substitutions: David Needham(12) came on for Kenny Burns (6).
Match in a nutshell: Kenny Hibbitt put Wolves ahead from the penalty spot after 5 minutes.
Martin O'Neill equalised for Forest in the 69th.
John Richards restored Wolves lead on 77 minutes
Geoff Palmer made it 3-1 on 81 minutes.
And so ended an uncharacteristically Jeckyl & Hyde season for Forest. Brilliant at the Fortress City Ground, but very dodgy indeed away from home. This wasn't what Clough and Taylor had built their reputations on.
Home and Away tables compared
Forest's away attendances that season averaged over 30,000, the third best in the league behind only the might, mighty Liverpool and Manchester United...
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| Away average attendances Division One 1979-80 |
Here's the detail of Forest's away attendances...
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| Forest's away attendances 1979-80 |
Forest League Appearances 1979-80
With the final league of the season complete one stat that I always like to look at is the players appearances record. Who were the ever-presents this season?Forest had a very consistent side, then with six players playing in practically every game. Imagine that these days!
It should go without saying that right at the top of any such list in those days was always John Robertson. This was his third consecutive season that he played in every single game. The appearance at Wolves was his 211th consecutive competitive first team match for Forest. I feel like a madman that I seem to be the only person even aware of this, let alone impressed with it, but I'll keep reminding anyone reading these pages, at every opportunity.
Robbo!! Robbo!! Robbo!! Robbo!!
As an extra bonus, Robbo was also the top scorer for the season in all competitions, with 18 goals - albeit with 13 from the penalty spot.
There were three other league ever-presents that season too. Goalkeeper Peter Shilton, Garry Birtles and Player of the Season, Larry Lloyd, but only John Robertson and Peter Shilton played in all 65 Forest first team games in all competitions.
Here's the full table of players' appearances for the season...
As you can see, three players missed just one league game. John McGovern missed just one match, away at Crystal Palace. Forest lost 1-0 that day on 8th December. The ever versatile Ian Bowyer slipped on his No 4 shirt that day. Viv Anderson missed the 1-0 defeat away at Bolton Wanderers, Bryn Gunn stepping in for him there. And finally, Frank Gray also made 41 appearances, missing only the home game against Bristol City on 9th February. This would be the only game Frank Gray missed in the whole season in any competition. It was Bryn Gunn again who stepped in there that day. More on Bryn later, but I've not really given Frank Gray much attention since I reported about his signing - a very smart and smooth one at the end of last season - to replace Frank Clark. So, here's my short tribute to a great Forest player, albeit one who was only with the club for a short time.
Frank Gray
Frankie Gray was born in Glasgow on October 27th 1954. He made his league debut for Leeds United, as a midfield player at the age of 19, in the first division on 10th February 1973 away at Leicester City. He came on as substitute for Mick Bates. Leeds lost 1-0. Brother, Eddie had made his debut for Leeds on New Year's Day 1966, just a couple of weeks before his 18th birthday, so Frankie had some catching up to do, clearly.
Frank's first start came a couple of months later at home to Crystal Palace, on 21st April 1973. He wore the shirt his brother famously wore under Don Revie, No 11. Leeds won 4-0 with Frankie even getting on the score sheet. The first time the two bothers were both named in the same side was at The Dell the next week. The Saints won that one 3-1. Eddie wore 10, Frankie 11.
Leeds' regular left back, Terry Cooper broke his leg at one point and so Frank Gray established himself in the left back slot in the team.
Frank followed in Eddie's footsteps for Scotland too. Frank's first cap came on April 7th, 1976 v Switzerland in Glasgow, at the age of 21, seven years after Eddie's debut at the same age (well, a few months younger) on 10th May 1969 at Wembley against England. Scotland lost 4-1. They never played in the same team. Frank had already been capped 7 times whilst he was with Leeds by the time he came to Forest.
Frank Gray was one of Clough/Taylor's best signings made in the close season after the retirement of the ever dependable Frank Clark. Gray was in from the start and made his Forest debut in the first game of the 1979-80 season, at Portman Road, where Forest beat Ipswich Town 1-0 with a Tony Woodcock goal.
Frankie Gray made another 7 appearances for Scotland whilst he was at Forest but at the end of the 1980-81 season, he moved back to Leeds United, who were then under the management of Allan Clarke. His last game for Forest was the last game of the season at home to Coventry City. Forest drew 1-1 (with a John Robertson penalty) in front of 21,511 fans.
Gray figured in the opening line up of the season, back alongside brother Eddie. The game was at Vetch Field, home of newly promoted Swansea City. It wasn't a happy day for the Gray brothers as Leeds got thrashed 5-1. Things never really improved and the club got relegated despite Frank Gray making 36 appearances and Eddie, 29. Clarke got sacked and Leeds' next old boy to try to fill Revie's shoes would be brother Eddie himself.
Frank made 18 more appearances for Scotland during his second spell with Leeds. His final cap was on 16th June 1983 whilst tour with Scotland in Canada. Scotland won 3-0 in Edmonton that day. Frank eon 32 caps for Scotland in all, compared to Eddie's 12.
Under Eddie Gray, Leeds struggled in the mid table depths of the second division for four years with Frank a regular until he decided to leave for Sunderland. His last appearance for Leeds was at Birmingham City on the last day of the 1984-85 season. Leeds lost 1-0 and they club finished 7th well short of promotion contention behind Oxford United, Birmingham and Manchester City.
Things went even worse at Sunderland. Gray made his debut for them at home to Blackburn at Roker Park on the first game of the next season. Sunderland lost 0-2 the first of five straight defeats at the start of that season. They were still bottom and without a win when Frank Gray scored his first goal for his new club, at Elland Road of all places, where Leeds and Sunderland played out a 1-1 draw. Sunderland's form improved as the season progressed and they just about managed to avoid the drop to the third division.
Gray made 37 appearances the following season but Sunderland finally succumbed and were relegated to the third tier for the first time in the club's illustrious history. Under Dennis Smith, Sunderland bounced straight back but with Frankie Gray making only 12 starts. The next season, 1988-89, with Sunderland back in mid table respectability in the second division was Gray's final "hurrah!" as he made 36 starts and 4 appearances as a substitute.
Frank Gray's last appearance for Sunderland was on 29th April 1989 when he came on as a substitute for Rueben Agboola, the ex-Southampton player I have a strange hunch was at Nottingham University the same time I was. Or maybe he was just a mate of a someone who knew him at Southampton?
Frankie was approaching 35 by now and decided to take a step down to the GM Vauxhall Conference and 32 miles or so south to Feethams and Darlington FC who had just been relegated from the football league for the first time. Darlo stormed to win the title at the first attempt with Frankie Gray making 36 appearances.
So after one season playing for a non-league side, Frank Gray was back to add the fourth division to his list of football tiers played in. Darlington were on fire and stormed to another title, winning the Fourth Division, a point clear of (amazingly) Stockport County and Hartlepool, as well as Peterborough United. Gray made 43 appearances and almost top scored with seven goals (six were penalties.)
Back in the third division, Frank Gray started the 1991-92 season as player manager but it didn't last long. Now in his 37th year, Gray started the season having to be taken off in four out of five of the opening games. Frankie made his last league appearance at home to Huddersfield Town on 15th February 1992 at the age of 37. 3,120 saw the Terriers win 3-1 on their way to promotion, as Darlo were going back down.
Well done, Frankie Gray!
May 14th European Cup Winners Cup Final
Forest weren't the only English side doing the country proud in Europe that season, Arsenal had beaten Juventus to reach the European Cup Winners Cup Final at the later infamous Heysel Stadium in Brussels.
Unfortunately Valencia won 5-4 on penalties after neither team could break the deadlock in 120 minutes of football.
Here are the match highlights...
Friday, May 16th John Robertson Testimonial
The following Friday Forest had organised a testimonial match for John Robertson. I am ashamed to admit that I didn't go. I can only imagine that boozing it up at University was just too appealing. I was determined to lose my virginity and I probably thought getting drunk somewhere might help! Perhaps there was one of those crazy "Hall Parties" where a Hall of Residence organized a band and lots of alcohol, for young students to celebrate finishing their exams.Anyway, no excuse. Sorry Robbo!
Few players in the history of the game have deserved a testimonial more. I'm not sure what the attendance was that night but I am certain it wasn't as many as he should have had. With all due respect to Leicester City, a match against a second division side was hardly a fitting match for the testimonial of probably Forest's greatest ever player.
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| Thanks NFFC40! |
One significant absentee from the Forest team that night was Stan Bowles. Looking back from here that seems reasonable to me. Ian Bowyer had played alongside Robbo for years, whereas Bowles was the new kid on the block. I'm sure "Bomber" Bowyer would have been upset if he'd have been left out. But according to Stan though, this was the last straw and put his back up against Cloughie.
The Forest team...
1. Peter Shilton, 2. Viv Anderson, 3. Frank Gray, 4. John McGovern, 5. Larry Lloyd, 6. Kenny Burns, 7. Martin O’Neill, 8. Ian Bowyer, 9. Garry Birtles, 10. Gary Mills, 11. John Robertson,
Subs: John O’Hare, Bryn Gunn
The same night Arsenal made up for their European Final defeat with a win at Wolves to reinforce their 5th place in the league.
But the following Monday night, the same eleven got thrashed at Ayresome Park on the final match of the Division One season.
Final Tables...
So here are the final tables for the 1979-80 season...
So Derby County ended an eleven year spell in the first division. For Bristol City, it was just their 4th season in the top flight. In case you were wondering, no, this was not their longest run. From 1906 until 1911 they were there for five seasons, albeit when the league only had two divisions. The Robins have not been back since. For Bolton it was just their second season back.
Similarly, Birmingham City rebounded at the first attempt, Leicester City at the second and Sunderland at the third. Going in the opposite direction, Burnley were relegated to the third division for the first time in their history. Fulham too were not used to such ignominy, they were going to the third tier, after nine seasons in the second, for only the third time. Charlton Athletic had been in the third tier (South) before the war but this was only their second relegation there since the war.
From the Third Division, Grimsby Town were returning to the Second for the first time in 17 years. Before the war, the Mariners regularly played in the top two flights. Similarly, Blackburn Rovers and Sheffield Wednesday were hoping for a return to their former glory days after playing just their 5th and 4th seasons in the third tier, respectively.
Elsewhere, the Stags were returning to the basement division after their brief flirtation with Division Two for their only time in 1977-78 and AFC Wimbledon, only in their third season in the Football League got relegated back after their promotion last season. Portsmouth won promotion after only their second season in the fourth tier.
No teams were elected out of the league.
Wednesday, 21st May Eintracht Frankfurt v Moenchengladbach Second Leg
Two weeks after the pulsating first leg, where Moenchengladbach took a 3-2 lead in the UEFA Cup Final First leg, it was time for the return match at the Waldstadion where I had seen Italy beat Poland in the World Cup in 1974.
Thursday May, 22nd Stan Bowles missing from trip to Mallorca
The following night, Cloughie and Taylor did their usual thing and got all the players together for a booze up relaxation session on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca. The idea is that it was supposed to bond the players together and get them to relax. Not good, then, when one of the stars doesn't even turn up.
Stan Bowles, without a word of explanation, decided not to go. Poor show, Stan!
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| Stan Bowles, where are you? |
Later, Bowles said he'd just had enough of Clough. He called him "a dictator" and said the final straw was that he'd left him out of John Robertson's testimonial. Poor excuse, that, I think.
Larry Lloyd also missed the trip but that was, at least, no surprise as he'd picked up an injury in a friendly for England against Wales.
So, with just six days to go before Forest's second successive European Cup Final, they were without their million pound, on-form, striker, they had injury worries about Frankie Gray and their talented midfielder had just walked off into the sunset.
Clough said "At this stage I think it is quite fair to say that he will not be part of my plans for Madrid. Unless Bowles has an incredibly good reason for his actions he has no future with this club."
So, as Forest had finally got their domestic obligations behind them to concentrate on Europe, so will I.
Hamburger Time
Get it? The name, Hamburger Sport-Verein before it's translated properly into English as "Sport Club of Hamburg," might induce a bit of a chuckle in some. After all... "it's a hamburger", right? It's a pun that several Forest fans would not miss in Madrid either. "Robbo Eats Hamburgers" was one of the best.
But when one realises the "er" suffix just denotes something like "[residents] of" - so Engländer means someone who lives in England - it becomes a bit less funny. I guess the most famous supposed faut pas here went the other way when John F. Kennedy famously exclaimed "Ich bin ein Berliner" in 1963. Presumably he, or his speech-writer had meant it as a rhetorical "I'm with you" but did not realise some would scoff, claiming they had missed that it was a connotation of a local donut.
Still it, was a great speech and it needed saying. I love the line... "Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people, to prevent them from leaving us."
Anyway, the history of Hamburger SV started back in 1887 as two local clubs (Der Hohenfelder Sportclub and Wandsbek-Marienthaler Sportclub) merged on 29 September 1887 to form Sport Club Germania Hamburg. Originally the club specialised in track and field but in 1891 some ex-patriate Engländeren joined the club and started them playing football. You just can't keep those arctic monkeys out of this game, can you?
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| SC Germania Hamburg 1904 |
SC Germania then merged with two others on 2nd June 1919 to finally form Hamburger Sport-Verien (HSV). The other two clubs? Hamburger FC and FC Falke Eppendorf. So, where there were once four clubs, by 1919 there was just one.
HSV started strongly and in 1922 they played in the German Championship Final. It was a Knock-Out Cup Competition in those days as the national Bundesliga did not start until 1963. (Home of football, Jurgen?) They played FC Nürnberg in the final. The first game in Berlin was drawn 2-2 and the replay was played in Leipzig in front of 50,000 fans. The match was abandoned whilst they were drawing 1-1 and the title was awarded to Hamburg, but after a series of protests they declined the championship.
Hamburger SV were not to be denied for long though as they won the title the very next season, beating Union Oberschöneweide 3-0 in Berlin.
In the Nazi era, HSV played in the Nordmark Gauliga, one of 16 regional leagues, often winning the title.
After the war, HSV were dominant in the regional Oberliga Nord, winning it most seasons. On one occasion, in 1960, their regional success was followed by a national championship win which qualified them for the European Cup, in which they reached the semi-final in 1961, losing 1-0 to Barcelona only after a replay.
Their domination of the northern league eventually led them to be included in the inaugural first German Bundesliga in 1963-64.
Hamburg finished a respectable 6th place in that first season.
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| The First ever Bundesliga 1963-64 |
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| Pokal meister 75-6 |
In 1974-75 they qualified for the UEFA Cup and reached the semi-final the following season, losing to FC Bruges. HSV won the German Pokal (Cup) that season, beating Kaiserslautern 2-0 in the final in Frankfurt. This qualified them for the European Cup Winners Cup the next season, which they also won, beating Anderlecht 2-0 in the final.
Here are the highlights...
As holders, Hamburg qualified again for the Cup Winners Cup the following year but were eliminated in the second round this time - Anderlecht got their revenge beating them 3-2 on aggregate.
The following season, with fresh money from the new Japanese club sponsors, Hitachi, HSV were able to splash the cash and buy in superstar Kevin Keegan from the mighty, mighty Liverpool.
After an average first season when Keegan struggled to win over his team mates who were understandably jealous of his massive salary, HSV started to turn things around and in the 1978-79, Hamburg finally won the Bundesliga for the first time. This qualified them for the 1979-80 European Cup, the final of which, of course, we are considering here.
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| Bundelsiga 1978-79 |
Before their relegation, in 2018, HSV were the only German football club that had never been outside the top flight of their regional league or the nation one.
Hamburger SV's European Cup path 1979-80
So, let's see how the teams reached the final, starting with HSV.First Round: Valur Rejkjavik 0-3 away, 2-1 at home. (5-1 aggregate.)
In the first round, Hamburg were drawn against the Icelandic champions, Valur Reykjavík. They had won the Icelandic league in 1978, with a six point margin over the second placed club Íþróttabandalag Akraness (try saying that after six pints!)
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| Icelandic League 1978 |
This had consolidated Valur's position as the No 2 club in Iceland in terms of title wins. In the 67 seasons since their league started in 1912, KR had still won it most.
Hamburg won 3-0 in Reykjavík with top scorer Hrubesch getting two. The formality of the second leg only attracted a pathetic 5,000 to the Volsparkstadion and Hamburg completed the job, winning 2-1 (5-1 on aggregate) with Hrubesch getting another.
Here are the highlights of the second leg...
I've never been to Iceland.
Second Round: Dinamo Tblisi 3-1 at home, 3-2 away. (6-3 aggregate)
დინამო თბილისი (= 'dinamo tblisi' in Georgian)
In the First Round, English League Champions Liverpool had been blown away in (Soviet) Georgia. The not so mighty, mighty Liverpool had only taken a 2-1 lead from the first leg to the Georgian capital where they were simply overrun by Dinamo, 3-0.
Imagine the thoughts of Kevin Keegan, then, when Dinamo Tblisi were drawn to play his new club Hamburg SV in the second round.
The USSR, like Iceland, play their football in the summer during a calendar year, so Dinamo Tblisi, like Valur, had won their league back in 1978, finishing four points clear of another Dinamo - from Kyiv.
This was the second, and last, time Dinamo Tblisi won the Soviet "Top" League. The league had been pretty much dominated by four big Moscow clubs, Dyname, Spartak, CSKA and Torpedo. 54% of all titles had gone to those clubs with Dinamo Kyiv leading the resistance from elsewhere.
Twelve more years, and the Soviet Union would be all over. You're not "top" any more!
Keegan played a big part in knocking out the Soviets, scoring in both legs. 57,000 attended the first leg in West Germany, where HSV came from a goal down to win 3-1.
Highlights...
In the second leg in Tblisi, an early goal from Vladimir Gutsaev must have made "our" Kevin wonder if the Soviets were about to dump his team out of the cup, like they had Liverpool, but his goal on 34 minutes restored Hamburg's two goal margin and they'd go on to win 3-2 and 6-3 on aggregate.
Here's a gimpse of that second leg, with some of the weirdest camera angles ever.
I actually visited the stadium in 2018 during my crazy trip to visit 10 former Soviet Republics during the World Cup in Russia 2018...
I had a lovely time in Tblisi - some of the wines were fantastic.
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| 3-0, eh Liverpool fans? |
Quarter Final: Hajduk Split 1-0 at home, 2-3 away. (Won on away goals)
In the quarter final, Hamburg were drawn against the Jugoslav champions, Hajduk Split.It had been one of the closest title races ever with two Croatian teams battling it out to the final whistle. In the end Split edged out Zagreb on goal difference.
This title put Hajduk Split further ahead of their rivals, Dinamo Zagreb, and one championship closer to Partizan Belgrade as they remained the third most successful team in the 33 year history of the Jugoslav league.
As with the Soviet Union, though, the Jugoslavian experiment with socialist "big brotherhood" didn't have long to go. Soon, Hajduk Split would be compelled (or have the freedom) to compete exclusively against other Croatian clubs.
Here are the highlights of that first leg...
The second leg was a classic with Hrubesch getting a vital early away goal to give HSV the edge. Vujovic equalised and then Hajduk were awarded a penalty. But instead of equalising the tie, Kargus saved and the next minute, Hamburg went further ahead with Hieronymus - so 3-1 on aggregate at half time.
In the second half, Hajduk got an early goal to make it 3-2 and then pile on the pressure until a Primorac headed made it 3-3 with four minutes to go. Despite all their efforts the Croats couldn't get the vital winning goal, and Hamburg went through on away goals.
Here are some (very poor quality) highlights...
Just a few weeks after my trip to Tblisi, in 2018, I happened to be in Split with my dear wife, where we watched Croatia v France in the World Cup Final. Their stadium today looks more impressive than their recent form.
Semi-Final: Real Madrid 0-2 away, 5-1 at home. (5-3 on aggregate.)
As Forest lined up against Ajax Amsterdam, Hamburger SV were drawn against the mighty, mighty Real Madrid in the semi-final. To make things even tougher, the Spanish Champions knew that if they could win they'd have the chance of playing in the final on their home ground in front of 120,000 fans.Real had (yawn) won the Spanish league quite comfortably the season before, finishing four points ahead of Sporting Gijon and six ahead of the others.
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| La Liga 1978-79 |
The biggest crowd of the tournament, a staggering 121,106, poured into the Bernabeu Stadium to watch Real Madrid carve out what looked like a comfortable 2-0 win. Both goals were scored by Carlos Alonso González (aka Santillana). They left it late but the lead was enough, surely, for them to hold onto in West Germany to reach the final.
Here are the highlights...
So, two weeks later, as Forest went to Amsterdam, it looked set for a Forest v Real Madrid final - not something to inspire us with great confidence. But, as those witty football pundits often say, nobody showed the script to the Hamburg players. Clearly, they had other ideas.
Hamburg threw themselves at Real from the start and could have scored a couple even before Manny Kaltz netted from the penalty spot in the 10th minute, after Keegan was scythed down in the box. This cut Madrid's lead in half and set up a storming second leg. Hrubesch made it 2-0 with a diving header, equalising the tie, seven minutes later and so all bets were off. Laurie Cunningham, playing in Spain after his summer transfer from West Bromwich Albion, hit the bar with a screamer before pulling one back for Real on the night, putting them 3-2 up and giving them a potentially crucial away goal. But two more from Kaltz and Hrubesch before half time turned the tie on its head. 4-3 they lead, at the interval.
In the second half, HSV missed a number of golden chances to seal the tie before Real had a man sent off. Madrid never really looked like getting on the scoresheet again, something that would have sent them through on away goals. In the end, a last minute goal by Memering clinched the tie for HSV. As news came in that Forest had held out at Ajax, it was all set - Kenny Burns and Larry Lloyd versus Kevin Keegan et al.
Here are the highlights of one of the most titanic of European matches...
Forest's journey to the Final
This, of course, has already been covered in these pages, so here are the basic stats and the links to the posts in full.First Round: Östers Växjö 2-0 home, 1-1 away. (3-1 aggregate.)
Second Round: Argeș Pitești 2-0 home, 2-1 away. (4-1 aggregate.)
Third Round: Dynamo Berlin 0-1 home, 3-1 away. (3-2 aggregate.)
Semi-Final: Ajax Amsterdam 2-0 home, 0-1 away. (2-1 aggregate.)
Path to the European Cup Final
Here's the full plan of all the teams who played in the European Cup 1979-80...
History of the Bernabéu and Real Madrid
So, we were all set for the big match at the famous Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, in Madrid in May.
So... who is Santiago Bernabéu anyway?
Answer: A footballer, manager, director and all-round "tipo superior con muchas felicitaciones" that played and then worked exclusively for Real Madrid for 69 years from 1909, as a forteen year old youth team member, until the day he died on June 2nd, 1978.
If anyone made Real Madrid into the mighty, mighty club they are today, it was Santiago.
In their early days, Madrid had played on a number grounds around the city until they settled on a decent one called Campo de Chamartín in 1925. It had a capacity of around 25,000.
It's no wonder that when the club were thinking of a name for the new stadium they were set to move into, it would be this guy's name that would be used.
Permission for the new ground was agreed in 1943 and it was built pretty much on the same site as the previous one.
It was built after the war and had an initial capacity of over 75,000 for the opening match in 1947, and then eight years later they expanded it to 125,000.
This is a worms-eye view of what it was looking like in the days before the European Cup final of 1980...
Answer: A footballer, manager, director and all-round "tipo superior con muchas felicitaciones" that played and then worked exclusively for Real Madrid for 69 years from 1909, as a forteen year old youth team member, until the day he died on June 2nd, 1978.
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| Santiago Bernabéu - Señor Real Madrid |
In their early days, Madrid had played on a number grounds around the city until they settled on a decent one called Campo de Chamartín in 1925. It had a capacity of around 25,000.
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| Real Madrid's ground before the Bernabeu |
It's no wonder that when the club were thinking of a name for the new stadium they were set to move into, it would be this guy's name that would be used.
Permission for the new ground was agreed in 1943 and it was built pretty much on the same site as the previous one.
It was built after the war and had an initial capacity of over 75,000 for the opening match in 1947, and then eight years later they expanded it to 125,000.
This is a worms-eye view of what it was looking like in the days before the European Cup final of 1980...
In the days before the final, football journalists everywhere were starting to speculate about the match. How would Forest cope with the threat of Kevin Keegan and the loss of Trevor Francis?
Hamburg were strong favourites especially after the way they disposed of Real Madrid in the semi-final second leg.
28th May 1980 My trip to the European Cup Final
I feel really empty inside that I can cannot draw upon any significant memories of my trip to Madrid for the final here. I definitely went on the train. I have a hunch I bought my ticket from a lovely Lithuanian girl who worked at a travel bureau at Nottingham University, but maybe that's just a fantasy. I went completely on my own, I know that. I have no idea if I stayed in Madrid just one night, or was it two? I have no idea where I stayed. It is so depressing. These days, I would have taken a million photos and videos but back then I didn't even have a camera with me. I have not one single image of me there. I've desperately scanned the video footage of the match in the end I know I stood in, hoping to see even the vaguest, shadowy image of some young, skinny 21 year old, but I cannot find anything that looks like me.If anyone is reading this who was there who did take some photos... ? I know. It's hopeless.
So what DO I remember? The most bizarre, stupid, irrelevant fact - that around the French-Spanish border I went through a town called Irun. Brilliant! That stuck in my mind.
This must have been the route... a ferry to Calais and then train through Paris to Madrid. I must have gone via EuroRail, as it was such a bargain for students.
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| Irun - yes, I remembered that! |
I remember seeing a few of them outside the ground at the end. I have this vague memory of chatting to Ian White, the lovely man that used to drive us to all the away games during the second division days. I hadn't seen him for a while as he'd stopped going so often and I'd been spending more time with my uni mates. If my memory isn't deceiving me completely, Ian was saying that he was "over" all this supporting a club business and that he missed the good old days when Forest were a crap second division team. "All these success supporters. Where were they three years ago?"
Surely, surely, we must have had a few beers in a bar somewhere close by, but I cannot even be certain of that. Maybe we went our separate ways after that. Another strange thing I remember is that I phoned a girl who I fancied in Kirkby at the time. It must have been from a phone booth as, of course, we didn't have mobile phones. Apparently her dad picked up and was not very impressed with this strange chap calling her so late at night from Spain. I even remember her name but I won't spell it out here.
That's it! Pathetic eh?
Match 401: Wednesday, 28th May 1980, European Cup Final.
Nottingham Forest 1 SV Hamburg (Bernabeu Stadium, Madrid 1, Nottingham Forest 283, SV Hamburg 1) Attendance 51,000.
I was stood there on the left side of the Forest end, lower tier... But where?
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| Algi... |
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| ... where are ... |
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| ... you? |
It kills me that my brain has retained so little of this most significant event. At least I did retain the ticket...
I used to have the match program too, but I seem to have lost that along the way somewhere.
Anyway... let's go (virtually) to the match itself now and take on board the amazing fact that, due to injuries, mardy players walking out on the club, and, let's be brutally honest, astonishing managerial unpreparedness, Forest only had 4 players on the bench. Can you believe that? We couldn't even find five decent players as substitutes. Jim Montgomery, David Needham, John O'Hare and Bryn Gunn - they were the back up!
Nottingham Forest
1 Peter Shilton, 2 Viv Anderson, 3 Frank Gray, 4 John McGovern, 5 Larry Lloyd, 6 Kenny Burns, 7 Martin O'Neill, 8 Ian Bowyer, 9 Garry Birtles, 10 Gary Mills, 11 John Robertson.
Goals: John Robertson 1.
Substitutions: John O'Hare (13) came on for Gary Mills, Bryn Gunn (12) came on for Frank Gray (9).
Hamburg SV
1 Rudolf Kargus, 2 Manny Kaltz, 3 Peter Nogly, 4 Ditmar Jacobs, 5 Ivan Buljan, 6 Holger Hieronymus, 7 Kevin Keegan, 8 Caspar Memering, 9 Jurgen Milewski, 10 Felix Magath, 11 Willi Reimann.
Substitutions: Horst Hrubesch(12) came on for Holger Hieronymus (6) in the 46th minute.
It's so fitting that it was John Roberston that scored that goal...
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| The key moment of the match - John Robertson strikes ball in off the post for the only goal |
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| Robbo!!! |
I can't let it pass that this was Robbo's 212th consecutive first team appearance for the club. He still had another 27 more games to go from the start of the next, 1980-81, season before he finally missed a game.
Thanks to the Forest twitter feed NFFC40 and a nice piece in the Guardian today I've managed to put together some nice images from the game.
The Forest twitter feed has been a great source of information this season, actually. Thanks to them I've been pointed in the direction of several video sources and photos I wouldn't have found otherwise. And of course, they have access to a lot of inside info I haven't. Their angle has been to report, in "real time - minus forty years ago" what was happening down to the minute goals were scored etc. My angle has been more nostalgic and looking back on the big picture, statistically and historically.
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| Great Photos in The Guardian Piece |
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| Munich Memories f' McGovern |
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| How many times? Yes, Twice. |
Here's the match in full....
You just have to listen to the moment the final whistle was blown when Brian Moore (bless him) makes one of the biggest goof ups possible in live televised sport...
"... and he's about to blow his whistle ... and Hamburg ... are the champions of Europe again!!! ..."
Oops. Well to be fair, HSV did look like scoring most of the game.
Here are the match highlights...
And here are a few more (very poor quality and still not the whole match though...)
A nice little summary...
I have to be honest. Watching the highlights again from all those years ago one can't help but feel just a bit sorry for Hamburg. They attacked Forest from the start, had most of the possession, devised the vast majority of the openings, created the most clear cut chances, had a goal disallowed that some officials might have allowed, and whereas they had a shot that hit the post and bounced to safety, we had a shot that hit the post and bounced in. But... we were without Trevor Francis and Stan Bowles. I think they would definitely have made a difference. With Francis' fire power up front, HSV would have been far less willing to push men forward and with Bowles in midfield we would have been more creative. But let's give credit to Forest's defensive work. Burns and Lloyd, rightly, got a lot of praise for the way they kept Hamburg out most of the time, but all the midfielders worked and worked and worked. I thought Martin O'Neill stifled the influence of Kevin Keegan as much as anyone. Any accusation of Forest being too physical on Keegan et al can, I think, be countered by similar allegations against the Hamburg back line. Buljan bullied Birtles most of the game, for instance. As for the fact that Peter Shilton made three or four great saves - well he's as much a part of the team as anyone. That's not luck, that's just being part of a great team.
Clough, typically, wasn't embarrassed at Forest's win. He said the next day "We gave Hamburg a lesson in application, determination and pride. They are the good things we don't hear enough about and we take for granted in English football. This has got to be at the very least approaching the most memorable night in my entire career as a soccer manager."
Here's a special edition of a Madrid Sports newspaper the next day...
The headline wasn't very complimentary to Forest. "Nottingham - a Fronton" suggests that Forest were basically a wall - a modern equivalent might be kind of "Forest Park the Bus".
A "fronton" apparently is the name given to the wall against which you bounce the ball in a game called "Basque pelota" which is bit like squash.
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| "Hamburg fail to level after a 1-0 from a counterattack" |
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| 1-0 Nottingham defend their treasure. HSV did its best but, Shilton deflected the few German chances. |
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| Brian Clough, radiant and Ironic: All teams can be lucky. But we would have had if Shilton and Keegan play together. There were hard times, but we responded |
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| The Goal |
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| The Big Party |
And here's the match report in the Guardian...
I don't remember anything about the return journey either. I did get home on the train safely, though. No doubt about that!
Bryn Gunn
Coming on as sub in the final with just about six minutes to go was Bryn Gunn, surely the most unsung of all the unsung heroes in the great Forest era. He got his European Cup medal, the same as John Robertson, so he deserves a bit more of a mention, I think.So, this is my last "feature" on a Forest player. I do hope I haven't left anyone out. I'll check soon and make amends if I have.
After this promising start, Gunn slipped below the radar for a couple of years, as Forest gained promotion and won the league. In the 1978-79 season he made just one appearance, away at Chelsea - a match Forest won 3-1. Missed that one.
In the season I've just finished covering here, Bryn made five appearances, two in the league (home to Bristol City and Manchester City) and three in the European Cup (Arges Pitesti away, Dynamo Berlin home and the final against Hamburg, of course.) I only missed one of those.
In the next three seasons, Gunn had his best spell for Forest making 33, 43, 39 appearances in all competitions. In the last of those three season, 1982-83 Bryn scored his only league goal for the club. (For a tiny bit of worthless pride... and 1 point, where did he score that goal? - Answer below.) He'd score another in the League Cup two seasons later. His last appearance for Forest was playing in the center at No 4 on the last game of the season in 1983-84 at home to Manchester United. Forest won 2-0 to pip them for 3rd place in the league.
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| Top Gunn for Forest in 1982 |
Bryn Gunn left Forest at the age of 28 and moved closer to his home town of Kettering when he joined Peterborough United for the start of the 1986-87 season.
The Posh were a mid-table fourth division side that season. Gunn made 160 appearances for Peterborough for the next three season and was almost an ever present for his time there.
His final club was Chesterfield, also in the fourth division, for whom Gunn made over hundred appearances.
Gunn's last league appearance was on 26th October 1991, 16 years and two months after his first. For another point and an even smaller bit of personal pride... where did he play his last league game? (Answer below) So Bryn finally hung up his boots at the age of 34 having made a very respectable 438 appearances in a career lasting over 16 years, 38% of them for a team that won the European Cup twice.
Answers to Bryn Gunn Trivia
Gunn scored his only league goal for Forest at Kenilworth Road, Luton on 30th October 1982 in front of 12,158. Forest won 2-0. Ian Wallace scored the other. Yes, hard to imagine that, isn't it? Luton Town in the top tier. Some may remember that they were actually there for ten seasons, from 1983-84 until their relegation in 1991-92.
Bryn's last league appearance was at the Shay, home of Halifax Town, still solid league members at that point until their eventual relegation from the league in 2001-02.
Statistical Summary of the Most Glorious Forest Years
I have to finish this series with some stats about the run of games I had (mostly) witnessed from the end of 1976 through to 1980. I can't help but tie the period to focus in on to those of John Robertson's run.So I'll start with a list of all the games his 212 consecutive match run. It's entirely appropriate because Forest's best spell almost completely coincides with Robbo being in the team.
No coincidence there, I think.
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| The most appropriate Forest player with the European Cup |
Forest won 55% of all these games (70% of home games) and lost only 16% of them. They scored 363 goals and conceded 164.
Most of these games were in the first division but, of course, they did well in all competitions.
Player appearances
So what about the players? John Robertson played in all 212 matches but who were the players who played alongside him most? Who would be in the "most played" XI?Here's a table of all thirty players who played for Forest during Robbo's run. As you can see, Viv Anderson is No 2 (in more senses than one) in the list, appearing alongside Robbo on 200 occasions. John McGovern was No 3, Larry Lloyd No 4, Peter Shilton 5, Martin O'Neill 6, Tony Woodcock 7, Ian Bowyer 8, Kenny Burns 9, Garry Birtles 10 and Peter Withe 11.
The table not only shows how many games the players played, but how many of them I saw. I didn't realise it, but I saw Chris Woods' entire Forest career. The table also shows the goals players scored in those matches and, which of them I saw. Again, I never realised that I saw all of Larry Lloyd's, Archie Gemmill's and Stan Bowles' goals for Forest.
I also included the players ages. From Gary Mills the youngest, through to Frank Clark, the oldest, there was a range of over 18 years with the average at 27.7.
All this got me wondering about shirt numbers and who wore the most different ones after Ian Bowyer who (surely) would have worn the most?
It shouldn't have been surprising, with the benefit of hindsight, but John O'Hare also wore a lot of different shirt numbers too, although two of them were both technically the same - as substitute. Most notably, according to my stats, Viv Anderson wore the No 2 shirt in every game, and Tony Woodcock wore 10 153 times. No surprise about Peter Shilton, then.
Silverware
What a privilege it was to be watching Forest throughout their most glorious years. It really is a football fan's fantasy to see his or her team being transformed from a mediocre outfit into potential world beaters - and I witnessed it all, well 74% of it at least. And this was at a time in my life when I had no responsibilities and maximum freedom. How lucky was that?Let's just remind ourselves what this meant in terms of trophies won.
In the times B.C. this is what Forest's trophy cabinet looked like...
In the "Honours Board" of English Football Clubs in 1977, Forest were in the top 30, having won those two F.A. Cups, but two pieces of silverware in 110 years isn't great and Forest had been less successful than Bury, Old Etonians, The Wanderers and... Derby County!
In the three years I've covered here Forest added six pieces of silverware, two per season.
Now, I can't really count the Charity Shield in the "Honours Board" but three years later Forest had moved up 16 places into the top 12.
In terms of European Cup success, Forest were among the greats of Europe now having won the premier club trophy twice. Only three clubs had won it more - Real Madrid, Ajax Amsterdam and Bayern Munich.
League Form Over Three Years
Putting the silverware to one side, I am sure Brian Clough would say that the thing he was most proud of was Forest's 42 match unbeaten run in the First Division, beating the previous record by a dozen games. I was sure no team would ever beat that... until, of course Arsenal, under Arsene Wenger, did.
Still for three years, Forest were right up there with the mighty, mighty Liverpool. Closer to them, than the rest were to Forest.
The silly thing is that we took it all for granted at the time. I should have known that the great years we'd seen would soon change but, to be honest, I was getting older and my interests were moving into other areas anyway, and probably have would have done so even if Forest had somehow carried on at that incredible level.
I was about to leave university and start my career - at first as a teacher, in Doncaster, so it was going to be harder to watch Forest in any case. Also, finally, I was going to have my own girl friend so, needing to catch up for lost time, my passion for football was going to have serious competition for the first time. Soon, I'd get into my Lithuanian roots adding further distractions and this would lead me to meeting the love of my life and starting a family - the ultimate reason not to go to football matches.
So, I guess, looking back, it couldn't have been timed better really. I had the indulgence of Forest's three best ever years at exactly the right time.
Putting it into life's context, when I moved south to work at British Airways I fell in love and married my wife and we started our family in High Wycombe. Amazingly I had another period of luck there as I had another few great years watching the start of Martin O'Neill's managerial career at Wycombe Wanderers.
Later, having got interested in human evolution, through this weird thing called the "aquatic ape hypothesis" I did a master's degree at UCL and decided to continue it at PhD level and had the opportunity to emigrate to Perth, Australia, to study it here at UWA. Again I had another bit of football luck having started to watch Perth Glory just before they won their first ever NSL title. And in the last few years, I have started following another local club, Perth Azzurri.
Clough & Taylor's legacy
Of course, it didn't all go pear shaped at the end of the 1979-80 season. Forest continued to be a force in English football for a few years, even after Peter Taylor and Brian Clough fell out. They only slipped into the bottom half of the table once (and even then they were 12th out of 22 behind Aston Villa in 11th on goal difference in 1981-82) until Cloughie's final tragic season, in 1992-93 when they finished bottom and got relegated. But Forest had a few of decent years after that too, after Frank Clark took them back to the top flight.It's easy to forget that Forest returned to Wembley five times in just three years, winning on four occasions. The first two were within three weeks of each other.
1989 League Cup Final
1989 Simod Cup Final
Three weeks later, Forest were back under the twin towers again for the Simod Cup Final - (or the Full Members Cup) a tournament designed to provide those English clubs that were banned from playing in Europe with something to play for.
1990 League Cup Final
1991 F.A. Cup Final v Tottenham Hotspur
Match highlights here...
1992 Zenith Data Systems Cup v Southampton
So, it wasn't just a flash in the pan. For 15 years, Forest had the fourth best points tally in the English League, behind only (of course) the mighty, mighty Liverpool Arsenal and the soon-to-be-mighty Manchester United.
But enough about all this. I have to draw the line somewhere at that is right.... here!
EurOpen League Summary
Right. The last thing to squeeze in before I shuffle off to crack open a beer and have a few glasses of wine and put the music on is some kind of closure on the EurOpen league I've been building up towards these last two years.
If you've read any of these pages, you may remember, I've been trying to get some evidence for the hypothesis that, all over the world - well, Europe, at least - football leagues have been getting less and less competitive and more and more dominated by fewer and fewer clubs.
The early history of European football leagues, from 1888 until 1978 shows that the English league was among the most open in Europe, if not the most open. 24 teams had won the title in 80 years and the top five clubs had not won the lions share of league titles between them. No other league had been won by so many teams, even as a percentage of all the titles that had been contested and every other league the top five clubs had won more than half the title between them. In four countries no more than five clubs had won it.
In the twenty years from 1978 until 1999, although the English league certainly became less open - and dominated by Liverpool and Manchester United, several leagues actually went the other way and become more open, in that more clubs won the league per season than before. However, even in those countries, even though more clubs had won the title at least once, the overall trend was indeed towards the top few clubs dominating more. If you look at the average figures for titles won by the top 1-5 teams you can see that whereas it was 79% for the first period up to 1978, the next 20 seasons it averaged 93%.
So, here's the final installment - a summary of European leagues in the last 20 years. So many former Soviet and Jugoslav republics have had their own leagues since the early 1990s as well as UEFA allowing a whole host of countries into the football region, the table is almost unrecognisable.
There are now over 50 nations in the list and I didn't include them all. The ones with a green background are new nations. It's disappointing, but not surprising, to see the Greediership in the bottom half of the table now.
Most notable, I think, are the leagues at the top and bottom - Scotland, the least open league out of over 50 in the whole of Europe. Scottish club football has always been dominated by the "old firm" but now, it's officially a duopoly. Contrast that with the new European "open" champions - Sweden, with ten different champions in the last twenty seasons.
I'll try to keep the table updated and improved over the years and, you never know, I might well post some more excruciatingly boring stats about it to absolutely nobody at all again in the future!
If you've read any of these pages, you may remember, I've been trying to get some evidence for the hypothesis that, all over the world - well, Europe, at least - football leagues have been getting less and less competitive and more and more dominated by fewer and fewer clubs.
The early history of European football leagues, from 1888 until 1978 shows that the English league was among the most open in Europe, if not the most open. 24 teams had won the title in 80 years and the top five clubs had not won the lions share of league titles between them. No other league had been won by so many teams, even as a percentage of all the titles that had been contested and every other league the top five clubs had won more than half the title between them. In four countries no more than five clubs had won it.
In the twenty years from 1978 until 1999, although the English league certainly became less open - and dominated by Liverpool and Manchester United, several leagues actually went the other way and become more open, in that more clubs won the league per season than before. However, even in those countries, even though more clubs had won the title at least once, the overall trend was indeed towards the top few clubs dominating more. If you look at the average figures for titles won by the top 1-5 teams you can see that whereas it was 79% for the first period up to 1978, the next 20 seasons it averaged 93%.
So, here's the final installment - a summary of European leagues in the last 20 years. So many former Soviet and Jugoslav republics have had their own leagues since the early 1990s as well as UEFA allowing a whole host of countries into the football region, the table is almost unrecognisable.
There are now over 50 nations in the list and I didn't include them all. The ones with a green background are new nations. It's disappointing, but not surprising, to see the Greediership in the bottom half of the table now.
Most notable, I think, are the leagues at the top and bottom - Scotland, the least open league out of over 50 in the whole of Europe. Scottish club football has always been dominated by the "old firm" but now, it's officially a duopoly. Contrast that with the new European "open" champions - Sweden, with ten different champions in the last twenty seasons.
I'll try to keep the table updated and improved over the years and, you never know, I might well post some more excruciatingly boring stats about it to absolutely nobody at all again in the future!
Top 20 May 1980
So here's the last of my "pick of the pops" from 40 years ago. I think it's most definitely a great way to revive long buried away memories. It made me wonder, apart from watching replays of football matches you actually went to, what else could evoke reminiscences from so long ago? Maybe some clips from popular TV programmes? I'll throw a couple of those in too at the end.
At No 19 was a weird song that will bring back memories to those old enough: Jona Lewie (aka John Lewis, from Southampton) and "You'll always find me in the kitchen at parties".
A bit of disco at No 14. "Back together again" from Roberta Flack and Danny Hathaway.
A bit more to my taste, at No 11, "The Beat" with the classic "Mirror in the Bathroom".
Gary Numan was at No 7 with "We are Glass".
My wife would never forgive me if I left out No 6, Roxy Music and "Over You".
One of the classic of the era, The Specials' "Rat Race". I've still seen this band more than any other (not that that's saying much as I'm not a big concert-goer.)
... and as "Specials Special" here's the B side...
A song very much of it's age was "Lipps Inc"s "Funky Town" at No 3.
One great bit of nostalgia from the time that, oddly, wasn't in the charts but was definitely out, was the Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark (OMD) song "Messages". Thanks to "Boro" for the heads up on that one.
No 1 was the theme from M*A*S*H. I often watched the program and liked the tune but I much prefer the Manic's version that they released in 1992.
Now to end with a bit of tely...
I was astonished to find out that on June 6th 1980, the very last episode of the kids programme, "Magpie" was shown. I thought it had gone on longer than that.
Here's few theme tunes to get you going...
Blankety Blank, hosted by Terry Wogan had only been on a year but would run until 1990. Here's the first episode...
One of the greats at the time was the BBC's sci fi, Blake's 7...
The best TV Comedy in 1980, in my humble opinion, was "Not the Nine O'Clock News".
But, getting back to the football theme, most Saturday morning in my youth, I'd spend watching the ITV's attempt at "silly TV," Tiswas, starring Lenny Henry, Sally James and Chris Tarrant. Remember the phantom flan flinger or spit the dog?
But, of course I have to finish on the most important TV programme at the time... Match of the Day.
Here's one from October 1980, in the following season. Hosted by Bob Wilson, as Jimmy Hill was reporting on a meeting of Football League chairmen. There's a nice spread of matches in this recording, Chelsea v Newcastle United (from the Second Division,) Burnley v Brentford, playing in the Third Division and Crystal Palace v Leeds United in the First. There's also the Goal of the Month competition which included a nice one from Gary Mills at home to West Bromwich Albion.
Signing off
Ok. Well that's about me done here. As I keep telling myself, it's been a labour of love doing this, these last three years. Revisiting glorious times from so long ago has been enjoyable to me, at least. It's been embarrassing at times to realise how little I remember from so many matches I watched so attentively at the time, but I hope that by trying to assemble as many items from the web that people have kindly shared with the world as well as adding some of my own recollections, I've helped revive a few memories for other fans.
I know this stuff isn't everyone's cup of tea but I'm quite proud of recording all this stuff on the web which I hope will outlive me. I am just a bit frustrated that some of my posts about the 1977-78 season were viewed thousands of times...
... but these days I'm lucky if I get a hundred. I don't think the quality has gone down, just the frequency. I think the Forest v Southampton (League Cup final) post was one of my best and it's only been seen 63 times. In fact only two this season have topped 100 and I think they were as good as any I did before. Bah! :-(
Here's a full list of the stats of all 89 posts...
I have spent a ridiculous amount of time doing this. Completely bonkers! Below is a chart showing monthly time spent blogging over the last three years. (Units are in minutes.) The summer of 2018, it should be noted, is time spent on my Russia World Cup blog. I reckon that's about 1,200 hours altogether, or 150 days work assuming an eight hour day!
I know this stuff isn't everyone's cup of tea but I'm quite proud of recording all this stuff on the web which I hope will outlive me. I am just a bit frustrated that some of my posts about the 1977-78 season were viewed thousands of times...
... but these days I'm lucky if I get a hundred. I don't think the quality has gone down, just the frequency. I think the Forest v Southampton (League Cup final) post was one of my best and it's only been seen 63 times. In fact only two this season have topped 100 and I think they were as good as any I did before. Bah! :-(
Here's a full list of the stats of all 89 posts...
I have spent a ridiculous amount of time doing this. Completely bonkers! Below is a chart showing monthly time spent blogging over the last three years. (Units are in minutes.) The summer of 2018, it should be noted, is time spent on my Russia World Cup blog. I reckon that's about 1,200 hours altogether, or 150 days work assuming an eight hour day!
Anyway, that's all folks!
Finally, please, if you spot any errors or fact, omissions, silly typos, or have any other suggestions for improvements, please send me an e-mail (algis@kuliukas.com) and I'll endeavor to improve these pages for as long as I can.
Finally, please, if you spot any errors or fact, omissions, silly typos, or have any other suggestions for improvements, please send me an e-mail (algis@kuliukas.com) and I'll endeavor to improve these pages for as long as I can.
Come On You Reds!
Algis Kuliukas
Perth
May 2020
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