The night when the famous ‘Forest way’ was redefined as meaning fear, ineptitude and calamity.
words: Nigel Huddlestone
So it had come to this. Forest jettisoned out of a porthole into the murky waters of the third tier, to drift among the flotsam and jetsam of the football league.
Like a bad dream recalled the following day, the details of Forest’s three season (yes, three) in League One are now ephemeral scraps and fragments zooming in and out of focus: an over-abundance of players called G Holt; a drubbing from Scunthorpe; attendance figures starting with a 1, hard though that is to believe now, right? Blokes called Clingan, Cullip and Curtis, capable of the odd heroic moment but never with a chance of the real glory by nodding one in on the back post in the Olympic Stadium; a Neville Southall hat-trick in a deconstruction of Swindon. Or was it Nicky? Yes, that was him, Nicky Southall.
The first attempt to climb out of this canyon of doom ends in mediocre failure, the second a play-off spot and a Friday night visit to Somerset. To Yeovil in fact, home of FA Cup clichés: something to do with a sloping pitch and once beating Sunderland (what, just the once?). Nicknamed The Glovers, Yeovil have a moniker to conjure among Reds fans an image of 11 moderately skillful but disappointingly slow forwards whose finishing prowess turns out not to be as clinical as their legendary manager once promised.
They didn’t even have a proper kit; what passes in Nottingham for a rugby shirt.
Though the modern media narrative is of Forest as a club where expectation is high and the fans have a sense of entitlement, we all know this not to be true anymore: even by 2007, a failure to rise to the big occasion and under-achieve over sustained periods was becoming commonplace, so hopes were set appropriately low on the trudge through the evening sun-dappled light industrial park beside the Huish for the first leg.
Having witnessed a 3-0 thumping from the shallow open terrace at the same ground not long before, it was to utter astonishment that Forest chiseled a 2-0 win, though the fact that it came by virtue of two penalties gave the victory a hint of streakiness in keeping with malaise of the era.
Memories are supposed to be fractured and imprecise: books and statistics tell you the facts, but they don’t remember the visceral feel of the relief of the goal, the joyful tumble down a terrace, or the glow of having witnessed a job done as you pelt back up the motorway in the dark listening to euphoric tunes at full blast.
So, a determination to rely on the grainy sepia of memory rather than the corrective certainty of the record books denies me the opportunity of recounting the scorer of the first, but the second right at the death was definitely James Perch. James Perch! Yes, a penalty. That’s right, James Perch actually scored, from a penalty. Yes, that James Perch. Well, I know, you’re right, it is hard to believe, but it’s true. James Perch scored a penalty.
Anyway, somehow Forest had confounded inevitability to stash a handy lead in the luggage hold for the coach journey home, and Reds fans settled back into their once familiar and legitimate trough of complacency for the return leg at HQ a week later.
Remember when Andy Murray was still a bit rubbish? He’d roll up for a game against presumed inferior opposition, cock up a service game or two, find himself having to chase the game, then bust a gut to drag the momentum back in his favour, only to bollocks it up all over again, leaving tennis fans to chalk up yet another year since Fred Perry and all that.
That was Yeovil at home in the play-offs in 2007. Nowadays, of course, we’d expect nothing more than a farcical performance with Forest fluffing the lines on the big night. But despite the downward spiral of previous seasons, the trophy wins of the Clough MkII team and the all-too-brief excitement of the Collymore/Stone/Bohinen et all years were still fresh enough in the memory to give cause for faith that the players could get things right once in a while, that perhaps nights such as Bramall Lane were but a blip in a positive long-term trend.
But the Yeovil game proved a transformative moment, the night when the famous Forest way eventually became re-defined to mean fear, ineptitude and calamity. Again, the details are sketchy, and a look at the stats is too painful to confront, but through the churned-up foggy silt of time I know that Forest had comfortably cancelled out a goal from a one-night genius called Davies to be cruising home with 10 or so to go.
What followed was the stuff of the young Andy Murray’s nightmares: an own goal in Yeovil’s favour, then another for them, before David Prutton arrived from the bench, presumably to restore some sanity, but actually kicked enough Yeovil players in the air in the course of a few minutes to be summarily dispatched back to where he’d come from with a flick of the ref’s red card.
From 3-1 up on aggregate, and with the final edging into sharp relief from the horizon, to 3-3 and down to 10 men in the space of a few traumatic minutes. When Yeovil popped in another before the echo of the whistle to start extra-time had barely faded, it seemed the game was up. With the prospect of a three-hour drive home and carnage all around, I nodded my goodbyes to those around me, unable to stomach much more. Seconds later I was back and, so, it seemed were Forest, as the other G Holt had whacked one in. Thirty-forty. Come on, Andy!
A few long and tired rallies followed but eventually that Davies fella delivered an emphatic forehand smash and Forest’s huffers and puffers had finally drawn their last breath, beaten by a real football team… from Somerset.
Redemption was to follow a year later of course, giving us a trilogy of significant end of season games against the same opposition: Yeovil, Yeovil and Yeovil – reading like a hellish firm of West Country chartered accountants.
Perhaps it’s just my glass half empty worldview, but it’s year one of this serial that made its biggest imprint on the psyche… or perhaps it’s just that it seems now to have marked the start of an era where to say you were a Forest fan brought not coos of admiration and envy, just sighs of pity or laughter.
As I write, it’s the day after Blackburn, and trips to Northampton, Shrewsbury and Rochdale seem like distinct possibilities. But at least it can’t be Yeovil.
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