lost that loving feeling - Restoring Forest's pride

I'm still undecided on the play-offs. On the one hand, if it wasn't for them, our season, while entertaining, would have petered out into another meaningless and fruitless campaign; this way at least we came close to promotion. On the other hand, it would be sad if the enduring memories of this season are drawn not from the excitment and quality of play we've witnessed over the past 10 months, but from the tears and heartache as Bramall Lane.

But if we must remember our season by our agonising play-off defeat, it should be noted that although we matched United's starting eleven throughout the ninety minutes, we were unable to throw on players of the quality of Kabba and Peschisolido to liven up the attack as the game wore on. All we could manage was chucking Jon Hjelde on for one last roll of the dice.

This is rather reflective of our season as a whole - when we were able to put out a fit team, we could take on anyone; something we proved on a number of occasions. But when the legs started to tire and the injuries started to strike, our form dropped notably.

There's not much we can do about it at the moment, what with no money to buy in extra strength to our squad. Also, I'm still not convinced that we'll be able to hold onto the players we've got, having missed out on the big time. We've already lost Hjelde and Lester, and I don't hold out much hope of ever seeing Huckerby in a Forest shirt again. The same might apply to Michael Dawson and maybe even David Johnson.

But now is not the time to dwell on the cost of failure to get to the Premiership. Now is the time to look back and pay tribute to the efforts of Paul Hart and his team who have surpassed all expectations this season.

Defeat in the play-offs may have sealed a long-term destiny of life in the first division and financial insecurity, but at least we tried our best to avoid this fate. Instead of just fading away into mid-table obscurity, we threw everything we had at the ambitious and unlikely goal of promotion and did ourselves proud. In the end, we weren't quite good enough, but that still doesn't change the fact that this season's escapades have restored a great deal of pride to Nottingham Forest.