A few years ago, somebody came up with the idea of lining up a night at the Southbank Bar in Nottingham with Peter Hooton, lead singer with The Farm.
Hooton knows football. He is a fine raconteur and has plenty of entertaining stories from his days following Liverpool around Europe while being the frontman for a band that was big on the âcasualsâ scene.
Except the Southbank was located on the corner of Trent Bridge, where you can get the most scenic views of the City Ground, home of Nottingham Forest. It was a Forest pub, with the walls lined with pictorial reminders about the years when it was Liverpool, not Derby County, who were commonly seen as the enemy.
All sorts of other âAn Evening withâŚâ events had been staged at the same venue â John Robertson, Frank Clark, Nigel Clough, Stan Collymore and various other Forest luminaries â and had quickly sold out.
Now, though, the regulars were being asked to stump up their money to hear from somebody whose football allegiances were with the team from Anfield. Seven tickets were sold, according to the organisers, before they realised it was not going to work and, quietly, the event ended up being cancelled. The moral of the story: never underestimate the tribal nature of football fans.
Perhaps this might come as a surprise if you are not old enough to remember the rivalry that existed between these clubs before Forest started painting the town beige, not red, and Liverpool moved off in search of new glories.
If you are under the age of 35, you might not realise why, year after year, Liverpoolâs fans launch into a song that sets out their historical position.
We hate Nottingham Forest, we hate Everton too. We hate Man United, but Liverpool we love you
Maybe you will not understand the story that John OâHare tells about the time he turned up at Anfield, as a scout for Leicester City, almost 20 years after helping Forest to displace Liverpool as the champions of England and then, twice, European Cup winners.
OâHare had his name on the list for the car park at Stanley Park but the man at the entrance with a clipboard under his arm did not seem too pleased to see him. âFuck off,â were his precise words. âWe donât like you here.â
Or how about the time Stuart Pearce let the Forest-Liverpool rivalry get the better of him and got in the face of Steve McMahon after an England game at Wembley?
Pearce was the captain of a Forest side that reached Wembley six times in four seasons. Their problem was this: Liverpool were even better. âThere was a lot of bad feeling between the two teams, certainly there was on my part,â says Pearce. âMixed with my natural aggression, it proved to be a strong cocktail that sometimes went to the head.â
John Barnes, one of the great Liverpool players of this era, went on to become Pearceâs team-mate at Newcastle United and got talking to him one day about one of Forestâs visits to Anfield.
âAccording to his version,â says Pearce, âLawsy (Brian Laws) was having a go at John Aldridge when I came up running, shouting, âNever mind Aldridge, forget about him⌠get fucking McMahon, get McMahon.â It was true. I disliked Steve even more than I did Aldridge.â
Pearce in battle against Liverpool in 1996 (Photo: Paul Marriott/EMPICS via Getty Images)
But football moves on. It has been 23 years since the two sides encountered one another and in that time Liverpool have won 14 major trophies, played in four Champions League finals and a banner has appeared at Anfield, in a twist of the famous Alex Ferguson quote, with the message: âLook Alex, Back on our Fâ â â â â â Perchâ (one star for each European Cup).
The fifth star came in 2005, the same year that Forest were relegated to League One (the only former European Cup winner to drop into the third division of their domestic league). Liverpoolâs sixth star, in 2019, coincided with Forest trailing in ninth in the Championship. Three years on, they are eighth and it has been one of the most exciting seasons on Trentside since the turn of the century.
You can feel the confusion of every younger Liverpool fan: who are these East Midlands nobodies?
âI was very much raised on my dad showing me the glories of the 1970s and 1980s, the history of the European Cup and Nottingham Forest being one of those teams that stood in the way of Liverpool conquering absolutely everything,â says Paul Machin, the 39-year-old creator and presenter of Redmen TV, Liverpoolâs award-winning fan channel. âBut there will be younger Liverpool fans who have no real concept of Nottingham Forest other than being a lower-division side.â
And who could blame this generation for their indifference? Why should they be particularly bothered about a club that has been in the top division in only five of the 30 Premier League seasons? What relevance is a team, 110 miles away, that has not played Liverpool in the 21st century?
Yet there will also be older Liverpool fans who do not need a lesson in history when it comes to âwe hate Nottingham Forestâ and the indignities they once had to suffer against the club that will host them in an FA Cup quarter-final on Sunday.
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Forest beating Liverpool to the 1978 league title in their first season after promotion to the old First Division. Liverpool, in Bill Shanklyâs words, were a âbastion of invincibilityâ. Yet Brian Cloughâs approach to toppling the red machine was summed up by one of the managerâs pre-match team-talks. âGentlemen,â he said. âThere is a sign out there that says: âThis is Anfieldâ. Shall we show them we are not bothered?â Warming up, someone on the Kop threw a tennis ball at John Robertson. Quick as a flash, Robertson flicked it up, volleyed it â and stuck it in the top corner of the net.
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Liverpool losing to Forest in the first round of the European Cup when Bob Paisleyâs team were trying to win it for a third successive year. Forest won the home leg with goals from Garry Birtles and Colin Barrett and put on a defensive masterclass at Anfield to leave the Kop mournfully singing âweâll support you ever moreâ at the final whistle and John Motson telling BBCâs viewers it was âthe end of an eraâ. Forest went on to win the trophy and repeated the trick the following year. âEvery time I watch Liverpool now I look for the flags on the Kop because thereâs a two-year gap in the dates,â says Birtles, an ex-carpet fitter. âThey go from â77 and â78 to â81. And I always think, âThatâs us, that gap. We did thatâ.â
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Forest winning the 1978 League Cup final courtesy of a penalty from Robertson that prompted Liverpoolâs centre-half, Tommy Smith, to say the referee Pat Partridge âshould be shot, as simple as thatâ. Phil Thompson looked a yard outside the penalty area when he fouled OâHare. âObvious penalty,â Peter Taylor, Cloughâs assistant, declared on television afterwards, his arm draped around Robertson. âNobodyâs doubting it, surely?â When Taylor was told the television replay showed it was outside the area, a smirk appeared on his face. âIt also shows weâve got the cup, thatâs the main thing.â
(From left): Forestâs John Robertson, Kenny Burns, Viv Anderson and Tony Woodcock parade the League Cup around Old Trafford following their 1-0 victory (Photo: S and G/PA Images via Getty Images)
- Fifteen matches from Boxing Day 1977 to April 1981 when Liverpool, the mighty Liverpool, beat Forest only three times â and failed to score in ten of them. Larry Lloyd, Forestâs centre-half, used to have a running joke with his team-mates that involved him peering into his trouser pocket on nights out and pretending Kenny Dalglish was still in there. âCome on, Kenny,â Lloyd, a former Liverpool player, would say. âYou can come out now.â
If this all sounds like some kind of strange parallel universe to the modern Liverpool fan, there was an entertaining piece on the Anfield Wrap website a few years ago to explain the history under the title of: We Hate Nottingham Forest â Erm, Why is That?
âWe had been deposed at home and abroad,â wrote the author, Michael Nevin. âGrown men had cried. I already hated them with a passion. I cut out the 2-0 match report and put Sellotape over the entire text so it would never fade.
âIâd already gouged out the faces of their players in my completed 1977-78 Panini sticker album. Iâd spent a hundred quid on footy cards only to deface every one of those bogus league champions. I stuck their badge over the treble 20 on my junior dartboard and got really, really good at arrows.
âDisturbingly, I saw a BBC period drama called Malice Aforethought about a fella who was poisoned by his wife and wondered if I could exterminate Brian Clough in similar fashion. Iâve always been a man of passion and rage, never more so than at 11 years of age.â
When Liverpool did get one over Cloughâs team, with a 2-0 home win in December 1978, the atmosphere was described as the best there had ever been inside Anfield for a league game. The headline in Liverpoolâs Football Echo read: âReds Smash Forest Hoodoo.â
It was an era when Liverpool were still waiting for Manchester United and Everton to challenge them seriously in their traditional, embedded rivalries. Forest filled the void and Nevin remembers it well. ââWe hate Nottingham Forestâ, you hear the Kop sing. We did, we really did; but only for a while.â
âItâs funny because the gaffer said to me after the game that he wouldnât tell anybody to get sent off, but if I ever wanted to get sent off against John Aldridge he would certainly not fine me for it.â
It was March 1994 and Brian Laws was speaking to Forestâs Brian fanzine (the clue was in the name) about a scene, from the rearranged 1989 FA Cup semi-final, that explains why Aldridgeâs name often comes up in these discussions.
It was the semi-final that followed the Hillsborough disaster and the whole of football was being asked to change for the better as part of a period of introspection. Before the game, a red and white tape was passed between the two sets of supporters to link everyone together. It was a symbol of solidarity. Forestâs fans refrained from booing âYouâll Never Walk Aloneâ.
But the two sets of players still desperately wanted to win. There was still a chorus of âwe hate Nottingham Forestâ and something happened on the pitch that jarred badly with the theme of the day.
Liverpool were winning 2-1, with Aldridge scoring both their goals. Forest were going for an equaliser when Brian Laws scored an own goal that ended any realistic hopes of a comeback. The right-back was down on his knees, taking in what had just happened, when Aldridge ran over, patted him on the head and ruffled his hair in mock congratulations.
âWhen he tapped me on the head my first thought was that it was one of our players saying, âUnluckyâ. I didnât realise until I turned round who it was,â said Laws.
âWe were playing Liverpool the following week, up at Anfield, and he was waiting for me in the corridor, waiting to apologise. I told him where to stuff his apology and couldnât wait to get on the pitch to meet up with him. Of course, whenever I got near him he jumped in the air. But my time will come. Iâm looking forward to playing against him again and if anything happens on the pitch⌠well, remember what it was for. Because Iâll certainly remind him what itâs for. It may have taken a couple of years, but Iâll get him, make no mistake.â
There is a bigger picture here, of course, and perhaps this can all seem remarkably trivial when the backdrop to this match was the worst tragedy in British sporting history.
Laws made this exact point. âIt has to be kept in context with all that had happened previously,â he writes in his autobiography. âThatâs why I felt there was no excuse for the fact Aldridge could not help himself. Despite the tragic events of three weeks earlier, he came up to me and ruffled my hair. I also saw the expression on the faces of my Forest team-mates. They were furious with him. Angry that, after everything, he had shown no respect.â
The strangest thing, perhaps, is that Hillsborough should have brought the two clubs closer together. There should be some form of bond because of the terrible events that day.
There were, after all, 28,000 Forest fans who watched the horrors unfold in Sheffield and saw, close-up, the desperate, often futile attempts to save lives. Many have been badly affected by what they witnessed; some have never been to a football match since.
âWe were just left to get on with it,â says Danny Rhodes, the writer and novelist. âWe werenât the victims of Hillsborough as such, so we werenât important and the way we were brought up possibly contributed to that sense of, âBe glad it wasnât in your end and get on with itâ. Many people I have spoken to in the last few years had totally forgotten who Liverpoolâs opponents were on that day. Itâs their story, of course, not ours. And yet we witnessed it, and some Forest fans never recovered from what they witnessed.â
On the 25th anniversary, Rhodes published his acclaimed novel, FAN, about the story of an 18-year-old Forest fan who witnessed the disaster and was left with post-traumatic stress disorder. It was no surprise Rhodesâ depiction of the tragedy had the ring of authenticity; he was among the Forest supporters at Hillsborough that day. It feels like writing it might have been some form of therapy.
âI didnât set out for it to be that way but, once I opened what was essentially a box of memories of that time, everything came tumbling out,â says Rhodes. âIt was certainly cathartic. I hadnât purposely or knowingly suppressed memories of Hillsborough, but sometimes it felt that way when I started rediscovering them.â
Did it change his attitude towards Liverpool? âNot really, as I never disliked them,â says Rhodes, who donated a percentage of the profits to the Anfield Sports & Community Centre in memory of those who had died at Hillsborough. âThey always played good football and were the team to beat. You had to respect them in footballing terms. If anything, on a personal level, writing FAN enabled me to make a number of connections with Liverpool fans.â
It still leaves one burning question: why have the two clubs not become closer after what happened? Well, Cloughâs comments about Liverpool fans being to blame did not help. Clough, an idol in Nottingham with a statue in the city centre, now tends to be demonised on Merseyside. Attitudes have hardened. Forest have been reticent in the past to make grand gestures on the anniversary of Hillsborough because, though the club never wanted to admit this publicly, they were uneasy about the reaction.
Maybe it is time for that to change. This weekend, it is understood Forest have been planning a tribute and that the discussions over the last few weeks have centred around keeping 97 seats empty in memory of those who died at Hillsborough.
At Anfield yesterday, a group of Forest fans had travelled to Merseyside to meet the Hillsborough Survivors Support Alliance, as well as the Spirit of Shankly supportersâ group, and pay their respects. It was an emotional day. A wreath of the Forest badge was laid outside the stadium and a book of condolence which contained page after page of tributes from the clubâs supporters.
âThere are still a lot of Forest fans who let their feelings towards Liverpool cloud their judgment on the human tragedy,â says Martin Peach, one of those who had travelled north. âI hope what weâre doing shows a more positive side of our fanbase.â
Peach grew up in Swanwick, Derbyshire and was friends with Paul Clark, who lived just round the corner from him and had travelled to Hillsborough in the hope that Liverpool would reach the FA Cup final. Paul, who was 18, was caught in the devastating crush at the Leppings Lane end. He was one of 48 Liverpool fans aged 21 or younger to die.
âOne of the many vivid memories I have of that sunny day 33 years ago is looking at all the bodies laid out in front of the Forest end and thinking, âThatâs a lot of peopleâ,â says Peach. âFinding out the next day that I knew one of those people, and their family, made me see the victims not just as â97 Liverpool fansâ, but as the sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, friends and cousins they were, each leaving devastated loved ones behind.â
Take a walk around the City Ground these days and it hasnât changed much since Liverpool were last here. It looks beautiful from Trent Bridge, with the reflection shimmering off the river. But plans to develop the stadium have been delayed and delayed. Close up, you can see the imperfections, the bits that need modernising, the clues that tell you about the years of drift.
There are a couple of pitch-side screens, courtesy of Fawaz Al-Hasawi, the previous owner (the one who decided he would take the replica 1959 FA Cup with him when he left). Before every game, a video is shown of happier times. The goals, the trophies, the glories. Memories, for the most part, from a different century now. âWe all agree,â goes the song, âNottingham Forest are magic.â
But Forest have had a strange existence since their supporters celebrated a last-minute equaliser from Pierre van Hooijdonk in a 2-2 draw against Liverpool on April 5, 1999.
That was the last time they played Liverpool â 8,383 days ago â and those supporters have seen their team lose to Woking, Macclesfield Town and Chester City (all in the same season) before being reunited with their old adversary. Forest, with two stars on their club badge, know what it is like to concede five at home to Yeovil Town in a League One playoff. Their fans have remained remarkably stoic after the last quarter of a century in Nowheresville.
To put it into context, this will be Forestâs first quarter-final in any competition since 1996. They are one of only eight clubs never to play at the ânewâ Wembley. Not a great deal has happened until Steve Cooper was hired as manager and it turned out the 42-year-old was rather brilliant at his work.
âItâs hard to argue that there is a rivalry in 2022, even if you still hear Liverpoolâs fans singing our name,â says Greg Mitchell, who runs the Forza Garibaldi fansâ group that has helped to improve the atmosphere at the City Ground. âOur clubs went in vastly different directions. But Liverpool have always been the team, more than any other, Iâve wanted to watch us play and beat.â
At 37, Mitchell can remember a couple of games against Liverpool from the 1990s. Yet his generation, and the ones after him, have largely had to rely on what they have heard from older fans.
âDerby have been, and maybe always will be, my main rival, but there has always been Liverpool, through the countless stories you hear. Iâve always hated to see them win anything. A couple of close friends are Liverpool fans and Iâve never wanted to see them happy about their club. When Leicester won the league, I messaged my Leicester-supporting mate straight away to say I hoped he enjoyed the celebrations. Not Liverpool, though â itâs ingrained in us, passed down through generations.â
Perhaps the most noticeable change that will be apparent to Liverpoolâs fans is that the noise levels are much better now, strangely, than they used to be when Forest-Liverpool was a big thing and Clough, being Clough, was the tormentor-in-chief.
The story, for example, about Clough giving Liverpoolâs regulation hatchet man, Jimmy Case, a kick up the backside at half-time of one match. Or the time he followed Alan Hansen down the tunnel at Anfield. âAlan was a quiet lad in those days,â recalls Phil Thompson, the former Liverpool defender. âClough was just behind him and kept clipping his heels. Alan looked round but it didnât stop Clough. âWhat the fuck are you doing?â I said. He never flinched, turned towards their dressing room and disappeared without even a glance back.â
Cooper, once Liverpoolâs youth-team manager, prefers a more orthodox approach. He is doing an exceptional job, too. The team he inherited at the foot of the league now has genuine aspirations of reaching the playoffs. Cooper has made Forest fans believe there could be good times again. He has transformed the mood of the club.
But he is also their 22nd manager since Cloughâs retirement in 1993 â two more than Liverpool in their entire history â and it feels telling that Mitchell, whose first game was 30 years ago, describes their wins against Arsenal, Leicester City and Huddersfield Town in the FA Cup third, fourth and fifth rounds as âthree of the best games Iâve ever witnessed at the City Groundâ. Again, it is a generational thing. These are the kind of freewheeling wins that used to be the norm, rather than the exception, in the days when Clough was in the dugout and Liverpool had to take Forest a lot more seriously.
John McGovern, the Forest captain who lifted the European Cups, sums it up best. âWe were like one of those comets you see flying across the night sky. We burned brightly, but it was all too brief. But, boy, did we burn brightly for a while.â
Nottingham Forest celebrate with the European Cup in 1980. (Back row from left to right) Martin OâNeill, Ian Bowyer, Viv Anderson, John OâHare, John Robertson, Gary Mills and Kenny Burns. (Front row from left to right) Frank Gray, Peter Shilton, John McGovern, Garry Birtles, Larry Lloyd and Bryn Gunn (picture: PA)
As for Aldridge, the popular story over the years is that he had to endure Tony Adams ruffling his hair and shouting âthatâs for Brian Lawsâ as the Liverpool striker lay on the pitch, disconsolate, after Arsenal had won the 1989 league title at Anfield with virtually the last kick of the season. Yet that story is only half-true. The Athletic has endeavoured to find out the truth â and it turns out Adamsâ precise words were âthatâs for Pearceyâ in respect of his England team-mate.
Aldridge did, however, eventually persuade Laws to accept his apology. âIt was a stupid thing to do,â Aldridge writes in his autobiography. âMy only defence is that I was so determined to win the game I lost the ability to think straight.â
The two men have shaken hands and made their peace after meeting by pure chance, as managers, while their teams were on pre-season tours in Marbella.
âWe got pissed in a bar,â Laws tells The Athletic . âI was with Scunthorpe and he was managing Tranmere. We had a few beers and put things right. He apologised. He said he didnât know why he had done it. He said it wasnât really meant in the manner that it looked. He knew it had upset a lot of people, he knew he had done wrong. It was a bad moment in football but even John recognises it was foolish of him to do it. It was childish and unprofessional but it was also just one of those things. I was never going to bear a grudge for the rest of my life.â
Laws did, though, exact his own form of revenge when he was managing Grimsby Town and Aldridge, still at Tranmere, rang up to ask about a player he wanted to sign.
That player was Ivano Bonetti, who was no longer wanted at Grimsby after a dressing-room row with Laws turned into a fight that left the Italian with a fractured cheekbone. He was seen as a troublemaker â and Laws was delighted to see him go.
The former Forest player enjoys telling this story. âJohn rang me and asked what Bonetti was like. I told him he was wonderful, that he was a great character â when, in fact, wherever he went, carnage followed. A week later, Aldo rang me up again. âI canât believe I took Bonetti. The players hate him, I hate him, heâs ruined my dressing roomâ. It was some kind of poetic justice. I said, âRemember the FA Cup, mate? I told you I would get you back one dayâ.â
Additional reporting: Paul Taylor
(Top photo: Paul Marriott/EMPICS via Getty Images))