In the 1966/67 season Forest are challenging for the league and a good cup run sees the young Gary Roe start dreaming of the double…

In November we went 13 matches without defeat. I saw this as no great thing, it was what I expected with the players we had. I remember waiting for the football results to come up on the telly at Martin Carey’s (my pal’s house) and we beat Everton 1-0 twice in three days over Christmas.

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The young Gary Roe is star-struck, but Forest are emerging as potential title challengers…

1966. The year we won the World Cup and, although a staunch Forest supporter, I couldn’t help admiring players in the England team. I also saw the likes of Pele, Eusabio and Torres, Riva and Rivera of Italy, and Lev Yashin of Russia.

I was in full support of England but I couldn’t take the players to my heart like Forest men. Ball, Hurst, Stiles and the Charltons would never take the place of the Forest players and it was back to the football season. By this time I had got my dad interested in it and he made the mistake of taking me down. It was better now as we didn’t have to catch two buses any more because we went in the car. I had also got a red and white woollen hat as well as the scarf, now I was fully kitted out.

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Gary Roe’s granddad took him to his first Forest games when he was a nipper. Now he’s hooked and learning more about the game by the day, which could stand him to make a profit…

It was the following season when I got to go down to the City Ground again and by now I was learning about league tables, points and goal averages. My granddad was full of information on football. He used to spot me with my football and give me tips on passing and shooting. He showed me how to head a ball properly and I was thankful for that. Have you ever mis-headed a caseball? If you have then you’ll know how Custer felt.

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The eight-year-old Gary Roe has just watched his first Forest match and now he’s hooked. His granddad is taking him to the City Ground once again with the promise of seeing the greatest player of the era in action…

The journey home seemed a long one, we had to catch two buses; how did Granddad know which ones? There were so many at the bus station called Huntingdon Street. I had been here before a time or two with my mam when we went to my other Granddads in Martin Street, St Annes, but there were never this many people about.

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The first steps I took to being a Forest fan came in a strange surrounding, Meadow Lane the home of Notts County FC. I was about 7 or 8 years old and getting interested in football, I must have been influenced by my granddad for a start, and he was football mad. He used to play a bit himself and his brothers also played quite a lot. The best of his brothers, Arthur played for Luton town. They used to say one played for Derby County. But this was all before, during and just after the Great War. Our family always referred to the footballers on the Roe side.

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I have just sat through the movie based on The Damned Utd by David Peace and I can honestly say the film made Brian look a wimp. Almost like a Yorkshireman I waited until someone lent me a copy before witnessing a deception of the scale of fairies, leprechauns, bigfoot and the moon landing.

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• The saga comes to an end as the Annesley Reds hope to be celebrating in Munich, thirty years ago tonight…

By now a good contingent from Nottingham would be set for the game after parking up motor bikes, caravettes and even the odd pushbike if Tony Delaney hadn’t sold it for beer money. We entered the ground and I took particular care to fold my ticket stub and save it for posterity. We got our first look at the stadium on a match day. The Olympic Stadium could hold 80,000. We knew it wasn’t going to be full, but the Forest end was pretty near to capacity, a great sight of flags and banners waving, bringing colour to the place apart from the lush green playing surface. To our right were the seats and then I panned around the rest of the ground and the Malmo presence wasn’t anywhere near ours. We made our way down the terracing to a good vantage point, as near middle as was comfortable.

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• After all the build-up, the big day has arrived for the Annesley Reds. How will they pass the last day in Munich before the European Cup Final? We’ll give you one guess…

Wednesday morning we awoke and planned the day. Teada and Stuart were off to the station to meet Bronc (Roy Lane), his brother and Dad and some others from Annesley, and then we planned to go to the Englishcer Gardens for a leisurely pint before the match. Bronc’s dad Alan was a staunch Forest fan and made the trip with his sons Bronc (our leader on the domestic front) and young Steven who was soon to be a staunch fan like the elders. Mick Haskard and Bob Topliss, who also made the trip, had been supporters from the 1960s and their claim to fame was to be pictured in the crowd during the ‘Gillies Out’ campaign.

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• Two days’ traveling sees the intrepid Annesley Reds arrive in Munich where they are about to experience some local culture.

I think it was pot luck finding our digs. We parked up and soon found the small hotel; nothing pretty, nothing luxurious, but at a fiver a night, that was for us.

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• In Part One, the Annesley Reds were nearly thwarted by an over-heating Ford Escort before they even reached Folkestone. How would the car cope with the sweltering Autobahn on the way to the European Cup Final?

About to leave English soil again on the quest for European glory, but this was the big ‘un! At Folkestone I was a bit puzzled. We were going on a Hovercraft; clear enough, but were we taking the cars on? Now that puzzled me. The fact was I was thinking the hovercraft was still in the stages as I had seen on a 1960s BBC TV Tomorrow’s World programme. Bloody hell, these crafts are big, I dreaded what happens when the big fan packs up over the Channel.

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• In the run-up to the 30th anniversary of Forest’s European Cup triumph of 1979, Gary Roe recounts the epic journey of the Annesley Reds to the Olympiastadion. (Read the whole series and other memories here.)

The season was over for most, but our adventures were just about to begin. We had to get to Munich and it wasn’t like it was a car trip there and back in a day. Official trips were being advertised from £70 to £400. We had endured the train journey to Cologne and didn’t fancy the idea. A few days would be OK, get there in good time and not have to rush, so after our last Sunday League game for Annesley WAFC I parked my football bag in the corner and we had an Extraordinary Annesley Reds meeting. All eyes looked towards Stephen ‘Ruben’ Beardsley.

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For us it was revenge time against our old 1970’s rivals Liverpool a repeat of last year’s FA Cup Semi Final. We couldn’t seem to overtake the Scousers in the League these days, but this side we young and talented and we stood a good chance as regards ‘one off’ cup ties. In public I would never have admitted that Liverpool were the better side.

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John Robertson

A Scottish apprentice who got into the first team reckoning and made his first League appearance in 1970, steadily going out of favour with the manager Alan Brown suddenly made a U turn on the arrival of Brian Clough and Peter Taylor. Talent that was raw and hidden by a casual approach to football in general. An overweight smoker who looked like a Sunday league player turned out to be arguably the best winger in the world.

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We are now 7  points adrift (counting for bad goal difference) from safety and it appears every player his trying his best, the manager tries to be upbeat about 1-0 home defeats which I find strange and the fans are not even calling for his head .

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Walking up the river side in doom and gloom I got a flashback as the second hand smoke found my lungs with every pace.

Yes I was once a nicotine slave inhaling from a Park Drive Plain or a roll up of the finest golden Virginia or dark Kentucky tobacco leaf. The first toke of a coughing nail after a meal or on surfacing the mine was worth the risks involved.

Failing that I always had a chew of bacca burning and numbing my mouth to keep me hard at it with shovel and pick. A John Wayne spit to keep the juice from going down my throat and retrieving heartburn of the fiercest. Snuff was nasally inhaled during the shift, clearing and incidentally blocking my nasal passages

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