8 1GS Saturday May 28 2022 | the times
Sport Sky Bet Championship play-off final
past with the present to create a new
future for the club.
“The club is as it is today largely down
to that history,” he said. “We embrace
and stand on the shoulders of the club’s
history but at the same time we want to
build on that and create a positive next
chapter and a positive future.”
Three times Forest have failed at the
play-off semi-final hurdle to get back
into the Premier League and despite
the strength of the opposition, with
Huddersfield finishing above them in
the league, there is a real excitement
and confidence that this will be the year
they end their exile.
“For these players to create their own
history and move this club forward to
where it should be, which is in the
Premier League would be great. But
they have to earn the right to be, there
is no divine right,” Anderson said. “But
if any club has the CV to be up there it
is Nottingham Forest with their history
and the supporters they’ve got. It would
be great to see them back.”I
have lived in Nottingham all my
life and this is the most excited I’ve
seen the city in an awfully long
time. We’ve seen some good, bad and
indifferent times, shall we say, at the
City Ground over the years. I played
in some successful teams, played in
cup finals, won trophies, won
promotions — good times — and also
experienced two relegations from the
Premier League.
When I left the club after 13 years
— following relegation in 1998-99 —Cooper has got fans off their
I could never have imagined that
Forest would be stuck outside the top
flight for what has seemed an
eternity, and, worse, that there would
be three years in League One.
If Forest win tomorrow, it would
put the city back on the map. Fans of
my generation, and older, can
remember the glory days under
Cloughie in the late 1970s, the back-
to-back European Cups, the domestic
titles. Another generation saw my
Forest team in the Premier League in
the Nineties, but there’s a whole
generation of supporters who don’t
know anything but life outside the top
flight. So for Manchester City,
Liverpool, Chelsea to visit the City
Ground every other week, with
30,000 fans singing their hearts out,
would be a great thing to see.
I was at the play-off semi-finalSteve
Chettle
Former Nottingham
Forest defenderCovering the Trent End at the City
Ground for Nottingham Forest’s play-
off semi-final, second leg were two
banners that read: “We have conquered
and we will conquer still.”
The first half of the statement was
accompanied by the images of Brian
Clough, Peter Taylor, Harry Hallam
and Billy Walker, in a nod to the club’s
illustrious history, while the final five
words were coupled with pictures of the
present squad and Steve Cooper, the
Forest manager.
Forest go to Wembley tomorrow for
the Sky Bet Championship play-off
final with the present crop looking to
carve out a place for themselves among
the heroes of the club’s past. For a team
who have twice won the European Cup
it seems unthinkable that they have not
been in the top tier for the past 23 years.
“You don’t have those thoughts when
you’re playing, you just think it’s going
to continue,” said Viv Anderson, the
former Forest defender who lifted both
European Cups. “It’s peaks and troughs,
it happens to most clubs. But at the time
when you’re playing you think there’s
no chance of not being in the top flight
for 20-odd years.”
Trips to Wembley were a regular
occurrence in the days of Clough but a
large proportion of the 36,500 support-
ers filling the West End tomorrow have
only been able to read about their club’s
success stories rather than live them.
The rich tapestry of Forest’s past is
something of which they are rightly
proud, but the players are ready to write
a new chapter. Victory against Hud-
dersfield Town would complete a
remarkable turnaround that looked
impossible when Cooper, 42, took over
in September.
Forest were bottom of the table after
gaining only one point from their open-
ing seven games. It was their worst
league start since 1913. When Cooper,
the former Swansea City manager,
replaced the sacked Chris Hughton, the
initial aim was to get the team out of
the relegation zone and yet eight
months later they stand on the
verge of joining the
Premier League.
Tony Woodcock,
who played for Forest
from 1974 to 1979,
thinks the club will
earn their own nick-
name if they win: “Our
players from our era
were known as the
‘miracle men’. If Forest
can get promoted it will be a
mini-miracle.
“It’s nice for them to be associated
with the guys from the past who did all
those things and let’s hope it’s a step-
ping stone on to greater things because
the people of Nottingham have been
starved of success for many years.”
Ryan Yates, the midfielder, says: “He
[Cooper] was walking into a good dress-
ing room with good characters just
lacking a lot of self-belief. Results were
not good. At any level in football if
you’re losing games, even if you’ve got a
great group, they will be negative
because things aren’t working. Slowly
we improved, individually and as a
team, and we’ve been riding a wave.”
On the pitch performances have
improved and Forest
have been playing
exciting football but off
it Cooper has been
credited with forging a
togetherness.
He was adamant from the
start that there would be a
family feel to the club. There have
been barbecues that former players
have attended and Cooper has even
taken a number of the club legends out
for drinks and has made them feel a
welcome presence around the ground.
Another of Cooper’s touches was to
ask the squad’s families to write
motivational notes to the players that
have been put inside their lockers.
Cooper is the 20th manager the club
have had since they were most recently
in the top flight in 1999.
While some of his predecessors
wanted to move on from the club’s past,
with one manager asking for pictures of
Clough to be removed from the training
ground, Cooper is keen to merge theForest call on spirit of the past in
Promotion would
complete a remarkable
turnaround after club’s
disastrous start, writes
Charlotte Duncker
What the stats say
Advantage Huddersfield
League position of the Championship
winning finalists over the past 15
seasons. Huddersfield finished third
and Forest fourth in the League
3rd 7
4th 3
5th 4
6th 110
Play-off appearances
for Huddersfield, the
joint most by any club
along with Brentford
and Preston6
Play-off finals for
Huddersfield, behind
only Blackpool (8).
Blackpool (6) are the
only team ahead of
Huddersfield (4) in
play-off final winsMost seasons in Championship
Present spell in second tier
Nottingham Forest 14
Derby 14
Birmingham 11
Reading 9
Bristol City 7
Preston 7
QPR 7
Middlesbrough 5
Millwall 5
Derby have been relegated
this season3
Only three times
have a team won a
play-off final without
scoring – and
Huddersfield were
that team on each
occasion. They won a
penalty shoot-out after
a 0-0 draw against
Mansfield Town
(fourth tier, 2004),
Sheffield United (third
tier, 2002) and
Reading (second tier,
2017).
Huddersfield v
Nott’m ForestTomorrow at Wembley,
kick-off at 4.30pm
Sky Sports Main Event,
4pm, and
talkSPORT, 3pmBrennan Johnson
scored as Forest
edged out
Sheffield United
in the semi-final