Now then,

Why is being a goalkeeper much like being a soldier in a war? There are long periods of dull inactivity punctuated by heart stopping moments of action when it seems the fate of the world depends just on you.

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Now then,

I see victory over Peru keeps Argentina’s World Cup hopes alive. They just need a result against Uruguay on Wednesday. The newspaper said that ‘Anything less than Palermo’s ninety third minute winner would probably have seen an end to Maradona’s pioneering style of International management’.

The word pioneering has come to mind this last few days. Forest truly have been a pioneering club. It means the first to do something and is not always a good thing.

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Now then,

This is a story and it’s a very old story. I’ll tell it to you as it was told to me and this might just be the first time it was written down.

It was a very long time ago when football was a different sport entirely. It was played by hard men as the leather ball hurt when it hit you and the shirts had buttons on them. The goalkeeper wore the same colours as the team and was allowed to handle the ball anywhere in his own half. It was a different game then.

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Now then,

I imagine it would be like this:

I’ve lost the best friend I ever had. He’s gone. The thing that gets me is that he played such an important role in my life. For a while, it was as if we were almost like a married couple. He made me smile when things looked bleak. He always made me laugh. He balanced me, he kept my feet on the ground and together we achieved so much. We made so many miracles.

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Now then,

1979.

I was there and yet I was not. It happened around me and I was conscious of it happening, but I was so busy at the time, I almost missed it.

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Now then,

I hate to disillusion young un’s, I don’t feel comfortable with it. It’s too easy to be superior, based on the number of years you have spent on the planet. But when I was with grandsons of a friend on the Red Rec earlier this week and I heard a conversation amongst a group of ten-year-olds about David Beckham becoming the highest England cap-earning player ever, I had to put them right. Never mind Bobby Moore and forget Bobby Charlton. The player with the highest number of England caps of all time was a Forest player.

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Now Then.

There are some days when the sun rises and reflects off the panes of my greenhouse where I grow orchids so red they are like blood flowers and I think life is good and all is well, and then the team I love conspires to lose 5-0 to second- rate opposition and I want to forget football ever existed at all. Sometimes Forest have made me smile and laugh, but more often, the woefulness of our team has physically hurt me. I bite the wife and kick the dog, but nothing really makes me feel better. On dark days like these, I look back and remember other times when nothing seemed to go right.

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Now then,

What a breath of fresh air yesterday’s result was. What a joy it was reading the papers this morning. For once we can all enjoy Reading again.

I was walking up the Little Park yesterday morning, taking the whippets for a stroll. The sun shone and it was almost spring-like. The promise of summer lingered and the promise of a new season and maybe, just maybe, another one in the Championship.

I was reminded of things that happened more than thirty years ago now. BC if you like, before Mr Clough joined us. Only just before, but before Brian.

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Now then,

I am looking forward to March 21st this year. It’s a red letter day. It will be the 113th anniversary of Arthur Grenville–Morris’s Welsh debut against Scotland. In a largely forgotten game, Wales suffered a 4-0 defeat in the British Championship. The year was 1896. It was two years before a triumphant Forest team won the FA Cup, beating arch-rivals Derby 3-1 in front of sixty two thousand fans on April 16th 1898.

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Now then,

For Christmas, a very kind lady bought me a book to read.  It was called ‘Nottingham Forest Cult Heroes’.  Now I love looking back over the years and thinking of all the games I have been to that have sent me from one ground or another, in great happiness or in deep misery.  Reading about players that we have had that played for their country, which excited the fans, which set the City Ground alight: this is something I love to do.

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Now then,

I was meaning to comment on the marvellous results of recent weeks, especially the game against Manchester City, but then something sad happened. We lost a good man.  ‘Chic’ Thomson died.  He was our goalkeeper in the 1959 FA Cup Final; the only time last century that Forest won the cup.

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Now then,

I am using the latest version of Windows Swan Vesta Word and really have no idea how it works. If everything turns to claptrap, you should not be amazed, it often does.

Southampton at the weekend was a very pleasant surprise – our best away win this season. Southampton and Coventry used to be Premiership teams that would stay in the Premiership every season by a miracle. Southampton’s miracle was called Matthew Le Tissier – a footballer from Guernsey I think: fat and useless to look at, but he saved Southampton every season.

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Now then,

Forest against Blackpool reminded me of this:

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Now then,

I’ve been busy in the garden this week. It’s been time to cut back and prepare for the long cold winter. It makes me look back to all the hopes I had in the spring. The tomato plants I thought would be the sweetest and the juiciest I had ever grown; the Wisteria I had hoped would climb right over the trellis work and the potatoes that when freshly dug were supposed to be so creamy you could eat them without butter. Yet somehow it just did not work out that way. The tomatoes were good, yes, but no better than last year. The wisteria was swallowed up by the weeds. The potatoes were hit by blight quite early on and never recovered.

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Now then.

There is a gentleman that deserves some consideration this week. Brian Howard Clough had a special statue raised to him in the Old Market Square. He was a manager of Forest and a former England player.

There are some moments in life when an individual steps forward and creates a moment of personal heroism that becomes historic. I think of Churchill in the second world war, or Atlee building the welfare state. They do something they were born to do. They change the world and our expectations of it.

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Now then,

I’ve had a difficult week this week, having a truss fitted is a slow process and my Doctor is from Poland and does not understand a word of English. You look like a right goon wearing a truss around your forehead; I was the laughing stock of the Darby and Joan Club.

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Now then.

I watched the game yesterday at the Daycare Centre. It was broadcast in HD. HD? Whatever next? When I was a lad we had one channel in black and white. When football was shown, it was the cup final. One team always had to play in white shirts and black shorts, the other wore black shorts and white shirts. Television was originally broadcast from Crystal Palace; the place where we gained three of our four away points last week. How come that game wasn’t on the tele?

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Now then,

 The last four times Cardiff have come to the City Ground, they have won.  So, I suppose we should not be surprised.  Forest are a conundrum at the moment.  Rooted to the foot of the table and seemingly unable to beat anyone, yet we are putting out a good team and playing well.  No one wants to go back down to that awful league one.  It sends shivers down my spine just to think of the possibility.

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Now then,

The last few weeks I have been moving house. I have managed to get one of those sheltered bungalows for retired people with an alarm in it, in case one of us falls over. It’s a really good thing. If I press it, some minimum wage Portuguese lady comes running expecting my death. I have set the alarm clock to go off at 3.30am just to see how quickly she can make it to the bungalow. Her record is eight minutes and she was half naked. I noticed she had hairy armpits and weirdly, a hairy belly button. Was she once connected via a hairy umbilical cord to some sort of Portuguese gorilla? Sadly, she has stopped taking it seriously now.

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Now then. If I had to state a weekly objective or aim to my writing, I would say that I am trying to show Forest supporters that as grim as things might be now, in the past, it has been far grimmer. This week we have witnessed defeats at home to Palace and away to Sheffield Wednesday. You could debate forever that we are a bigger club then either of them. I remember losing to Palace 4-1 in the first game of the 1921 season, but I also recall the side that destroyed Wednesday 7-1 in April 1995. The side that day was Crossley, Lyttle, Pearce, Cooper, Chettle, Stone, Phillips, Bohinen, Roy, Collymore, Woan. Was this our best ever post-Clough side? I think so.

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