Debut (1987)

Dad has decided to take you to a Nottingham Forest match. It’s your first. Your debut. Why now? You’re nearly nine-years-old, you’ve been showing an interest for a year or so. You know the history, you can name the current team and you’ve been collecting Panini stickers with the faces of these men you will soon be calling your heroes. However, it’s only three years since the Bradford City fire when 56 people were killed, and only two years after the Heysel Stadium disaster when 39 Juventus fans died after they were crushed under a wall. Violence outside and inside England’s football grounds appears to be the norm. As a result, fans are caged in at matches, treated like animals, and that will lead to the one of the worst sporting tragedies ever seen. It’s not a cosy time to be introducing a child to the sport, and its surprising Mum ever let you go, but Dad believes in the positives of the game, the magic, the glory and he also knows it will bring you closer together as father and son.

It begins on a Sunday in March 1987, a home game against Leicester City. You and Dad are clearly late for the game, or so it would appear. He drives you speedily through the city to the match in his red Dodge van that he uses for work. You wish the van was black so it would like the one from The A-Team. He parks it somewhere he shouldn’t, a pub car-park designated for customers only. There is no chance of getting anywhere near the ground and he doesn’t want to pay to park. It means you have a bit of a walk. 

You jump out the van. Tatty invoices, bits of electrical cable and an old coke can follow you. You pick them up and stuff them back in the footwell and then scuttle around the other side to meet Dad, who has been putting on his coat. He smiles at you affectionately and asks if you’re warm enough? You are. You’ve got a red and white scarf, that a great aunt knitted, wrapped several times around your neck. It really is stupidly long. 

You hold his big rough hand that has been gripping power tools all week and then he starts to stride towards the ground, your little legs try to keep up with his. You think you’re late but then as you cross London Road the crowd walking in the same direction suddenly swells. There’s a mixture of voices, mostly happy, discussing what we need from the game. Another man just wants to see some good football. You hear swearing too but nothing you haven’t heard before.

As we approach Trent Bridge, you hear sausages and burgers sizzling on a small griddle. The vendor, a small animated man, whips the charred meat into fluffy cobs, followed by soggy onions and a squirt of tomato sauce and mustard. He moves quickly on to the next customer. Our pace has slowed now as we start to cross the bridge. The swirling, murky waters of the River Trent make you feel queasy. But you look to your left and see the City Ground and a warm feeling comes over you, it makes you skip a little. You can make out the word FOREST spelled out in white seats on the stand facing you. A mass of bodies glow orange under sodium lamps as they make their way to the turnstiles. 

It gets more congested as you get nearer and you hold Dad’s hand tighter as you ease your way past people. There’s a man selling pin badges and old programmes including those from when Forest won the European Cup seven years ago. Those days are long gone but there’s much optimism. We still have the same manager, the one and only Brian Clough, who is still very much in his prime and desperate for more trophies. He’s got a good crop of talent at the club including Neil Webb, who you like best because you both share a name (you’ll later copy the way he writes Neil which will eventually form your own signature). There’s also Des Walker, a quick and at times unbeatable defender, Johnny Metgod, a Dutch midfielder with a shiny pate and a powerful right boot, Nigel Clough, the manager’s son and the club’s top scorer, and finally there’s Stuart Pearce. You’re not sure about him at first, his fixed, serious, glare scares you a little, but this man, who will later become the captain, will prove important to you. One of the greatest players ever to wear the shirt.

Dad buys you a programme, it’s 50p, and has Garry Birtles, in his second spell at the club, standing alongside Metgod, all in red with the words Home Ales across the middle of the shirt, a local brewery that will soon cease trading after 170 years of business. In Brian Clough’s column he thanks the fans for coming. He bemoans the effect colour television is having on attendances and says he’s “banging the drum for live football – the variety you see with your own eyes in lovely fresh air”. The air is certainly fresh, you would go as far as saying it’s nippy, winter hasn’t quite let go yet. But there’s an irony when you look at the back of the programme where there is an advert for John Player Superkings cigarettes – so much for fresh air. Dad ushers you through a narrow turnstyle. You hand your ticket to a man behind some red metal mesh who tears off the bit he needs and hands back the stub to you. Dad follows you and then has a quick glance of the ticket, before you both start climbing concrete steps up to the stand. 

You’re sitting in the Junior Reds section. You joined the club through an advert in the Evening Post and received a package in the post that contained a letter from Brian Clough, a sheet of printed autographs, a car sticker, a badge and a t-shirt. Dad is not too far away but makes sure you know where he’ll be and tells me to stay where I am at half-time and not to wander off. He ruffles my hair and tells me to enjoy the game. I look across the luminous green pitch and even from my position five rows from the playing surface I can smell the wet turf. To my left is the Trent End, which looks like a farm building, and this is where all the early noise is coming from. 

“Notting-um, Notting-um, Notting-um, Notting-um, Notting-um, Notting-um, Notting-um, NOT-TING-UM!” they chant. The Leicester supporters, in the opposing Bridgford stand, try their own song and get a sardonic wolf-whistle in return. 

You’ll remember the game in flashes. Forest score two. Franz Carr, a tricky right winger, and Nigel Clough, referred to by his father as ‘the centre-forward’, get the goals. Both from close range after some neat passing. 

The game finishes 2-1 to Forest. 

As you leave you walk across Trent Bridge. You turn to your right this time and it takes your breath away. The City Ground lit up is a sight to behold, almost celestial. The glow from the floodlights turns the evening sky blue, forming a dome over the stadium. White light glitters gently on the now black waters of the Trent. This scene remains a key part of the magic.

You can’t wait for Dad to bring you again.

Season after season your emotions will be all over the place, you will have such massive highs beyond compared with anything else you will experience in life. You will also be hit by the lows, you’ll get low, frustrated, lose sleep, and wish Dad had never brought you to the City Ground in the first place. But there’s no going back. All of your hopes will be invested in the custodians of that shirt, that beautiful glossy red shirt with the little white tree. You don’t know it yet but over the decades this team, whoever plays, will help you through some dark times.