Once you’re hitched-up with the club you support, life gets peopled with players you’ve never met who become as familiar as family. We all have our favourites, past and present, and for a multitude of reasons. Support Forest and you’re spoilt for choice! There’s an extensive gallery of local heroes to choose from and early-days names came thick and fast for me.

Hero-status in our house was soon conferred on Roy Dwight. His name had bounced around all season for his ‘Outside Right’ goal-scoring prowess and even Mum spoke his name as if he’d moved in next door. With his goal and then stretchered exit with a broken leg in the 1959 FA Cup final, he was forever fixed in my five year-old memory. For years, I knew that Cup winning team by heart (in much the same way as my nephew now recounts the Forest line-up and who’s on form or off).

Plenty of players performed with distinction that Final day and since. Some players win over supporters by their longevity, notching up hundreds of appearances for a single club and being rewarded with a testimonial. My dad was ever respectful of Bob McKinlay (‘Centre Half’ on Cup day) who joined Forest as a teenager and went on to make over 600 league appearances for the Reds. ‘A servant’ said Dad, ‘an example to lads like you and a real gentleman.’ That last point was well illustrated by the fact that his career on the pitch went unblemished, discipline-wise, until a single booking came his way. That’s some record and one worth retrieving to remind us not just of different times but of club loyalty, neither so evident or celebrated so frequently these days.

That said, my young head yearned for goal-scorers, match-winners, forwards with a turn of speed or an explosive shot. My dad and grandad, idling through a Sunday afternoon of sitting-room chat would sometimes land on the name of Wally Ardron, the post-war Forest forward with a formidable scoring record: 124 goals in 191 games! I’d listen to them warm to their theme and watch them go misty-eyed in a reverie of remembering. Happy to bathe in their their affection for the Forest talisman, I wanted my own goal-scoring character to cheer and celebrate. Cue the arrival of Joe Baker in 1966.

For a couple of junior school years, I’ll admit to a bit of a wobble in my affections for Forest. I became a voracious reader and anything football related, from bubble-gum-card-collection player pen-portraits to ‘Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly’ and detailed histories of clubs, got consumed. Inevitably, this included an account of Manchester United’s plane crash in Munich,1958, when so many of the team lost their lives. Nicknamed the ‘Busby Babes’, after manager Matt Busby and their youth, the tragedy caught my imagination and sense of wonder that a new and successful team might emerge from the wreckage. That was the compelling football romance: a phoenix rising from the ashes.

My fealty to Forest restored, normal service was resumed and I ached for success at the City Ground. The Reds meant Nottingham Forest, not Man U, and they showed serious intent for the future with the signing of Baker in February 1966. He’d played with team and flatmate Denis Law in Italy at Torino for goodness sake! (He’d also nearly put an end to his career in a car-crash whilst there.) As Law went on to glory with United, Joe headed for Arsenal, an impressive scoring record, and then to us where he was soon crowned King of the Trent End by adoring fans.

Statistics tell a tale for any forward – the all-important goal tally – but they don’t tell you the whole worth of a player. How best to capture the magic of the man Joe Baker? Well, he’s in a very select group of players that had me so excited in childhood I’d be close to weeing my pants at games whenever he had the ball! He was lightning-fast, had the predatory instincts of a striker and scored spectacular as well as simple goals. And all was done with a smile. That was his style.

During one match, when Dad managed to get us directly behind the goal at the kop-end, I witnessed Baker sprint full-throttle towards me. In the time it took to register what was happening, he’d found space, received the ball, made for goal, controlled an awkward bounce with his hand, coolly slotted the ball in the net, and then broad-smiled at the crowd before wheeling away to a huddle with his team-mates. Another time, when the Reds trounced Burnley 4-1 in an evening fixture, it felt like the floodlights shone just for him. My memory tells me the stunning goal Baker scored was an overhead bicycle kick. (Please don’t correct me if I’m wrong!) Continental style coming to the City Ground! That 1966-67 season, the First Division Championship nearly did, too. Forest finished runners’ up behind…Manchester United, but I had a player to idolise.

*Article provided by Stephen Parker (Nottingham Forest Correspondent).

*Main image @NFFC Joe Baker in action against Bolton Wanderers in 1968.