“It’s really important to tell their stories and I’d love to hear grandad’s story, and he wants to do it,” Vicky McClure, 2023. Eighty years ago, the D-Day Landings took place on the beaches of Normandy, France, among them, a promising young footballer, Ralph McClure, of Collingham Footway, the Meadows, in Nottingham. Fast-forward eighty years,…
As the gates clunk shut at grounds around the country to signal the end of May and another football season, players will head off for well-earned rests to every popular destination you’d find in a travel agent. Aside from participation in the FA Cup and European finals, teams are now left free to lick their…
I blame Manchester United – in part, at least – for the early demise to my blossoming career as a sports journalist. It’s a tale full of intrigue, with accusations of fraud and dodgy money-making. The saga would have sat comfortably in today’s Westminster world of law-bending and money for honours culture but this was…
When Dad plants the programme on our kitchen table, he gives me a Cheshire-cat grin. ‘Here you are. Luton Town versus Nottingham Forest. FA Cup final at Wembley. May 2nd 1959.’ Over a Sunday breakfast fry-up, he picks out pages, names and photos. I can’t read (I’m five) and I don’t know what a football…
There’s a heady list of past athletes to have played more than on sport in the county of Nottinghamshire, and we’ve already covered a few of those, but, surely up there, in the echelons of the greats, is Nottingham-born, rugby union legend, Vincent Cartwright. A recipient of both the DSO (Distinguished Service Order) and the…
Is there anything quite like a match at the City Ground on a winter’s night? Something about darkness intensifies the experience as senses shift into hyper-alert. Every smell becomes essence of, whether it’s fags, beer or burgers. Every sight gains another characteristic, from a black velvet, rippling Trent, to a stadium so illuminated it has…
When the Titanic hit an iceberg in April 1912, on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, Captain Edward John Smith went down with his ship. He was following a maritime tradition, though there was no legal obligation to do so. If ‘the last person to leave the sinking ship’ has a ring of…
An eye-catching scoreline: Nottingham Forest 12 – 0 Leicester. Remember that? No, not even I do! That thrashing for Leicester Fosse (as they were then) came in a First Division fixture in 1909 and proved to be the heaviest defeat they’ve ever suffered. They went on to be relegated and, a decade later, ‘Fosse’ became…
Sounds, smells, taste, touch, places and things can all evoke powerful, personal associations for us. These can be life-affirming, beautiful and positive, sometimes the opposite, sometimes good and bad. And the trigger for the memory might not be obvious. Take bananas. They are nutritious and much loved in sport by such as tennis players at…
‘We hate Nottingham Forest, we hate Everton too, we hate Man United, but Liverpool, we love you.’ There’s a catchy little chant that’s echoed round the terraces since the late 1960s! Supporters could substitute different names, of course, but that version had particular bite for Forest and Liverpool fans in the late 70s. Last Saturday’s…
During the mid-nineties, I lived in West Bridgford with my ex-wife and two young children. My son Matt was always cricket crazy, taking after his Dad and for a bit of fun, from about 4 years old, I used to run a cricket session for him and his mates from the local Primary School on…
Pub quiz question: what English region dominated the European Cup competition between 1979-82? Answer – as if you didn’t know! – the Midlands. Forest won that cup in 1979 and 1980 and Aston Villa in 1982. (Ok, Liverpool won it in 1981.) It’s a detail of footballing history that I revisit each time the two…
At the tail end of last season, I caught up with a former Forest frontman Kevin Campbell, he spoke at length regarding his move to the City Ground, Pierre Van Hooijdonk, non-tackling centre halves and the fear of being marooned on a desert island with Andy Johnson. Despite numerous invites by Nottingham Forest over the…
One thing that the supporters of tonight’s headline Premier League match have in common is that the older and longer suffering fans of both Nottingham Forest and Manchester City will be able to familiarise themselves together, as one, with both glorious and dismaying pasts. These days the Citizens are used to winning silverware under Pep…
On Sunday, August 28th, the Sky TV circus rolls into town to cover the City Ground late-afternoon fixture. Currently in the top ten of highest-earning clubs in the world, visitors Tottenham Hotspur, managed by Antonio Conte (a pitch-side pugilist of late!) and captained by Harry Kane (recent scorer of his 250th goal for the club),…
Some people have it in spades; some people can barely muster a teaspoon full: emotional intelligence. It’s a fancy phrase to describe how well we communicate with one another, how we mange relationships at a personal or public level. To be effective, you need self-awareness and empathy. Forest fans currently don’t have to stray far…
Blidworth-born, Ernest Coleman, took less than 25 years to rise from his day of birth, in January 1908, to the top of British football’s First Division, with that of London club, Arsenal, in the 1930s. A goal-scorer of the highest order, there is one club that probably regretted, for many years, not signing Coleman as…
The aftermath of the Second World War would see the Home Nations, as well as countries right across the globe, rebuilding their lives as best they could; the pastime of football was one such way and it was to be the same in the Nottinghamshire colliery town of Linby. Initially formed in the late 1800s,…
In the days before the first official County Cricket Championship was contested in 1890, there was a period between 1864 to 1889 when a number of counties played for the ‘Champion County’ title. Nottinghamshire were named by various publications and historians as the top county on 16 occasions, many shared with other counties. In 1907,…
A Nottinghamshire cricketer for 21 years, Arthur Carr was the captain of the team for the final 16 of those years, and was also the skipper of the England national team in test matches. Once named the Wisden Cricketer of the Year, Carr was probably best remembered as being one of the architects of the…
