Did it avoid a bombing in the war i wonder? That usually helps
Coventry on the other handâŚ
The Irish club is a grand spot in Nottingham.
Iâve always liked the town.
That was an epic atmosphere. I had to turn off the penalties.
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Agreed, imagine someone from Preston supporting Spurs
Is there background to the assault on Billy Sharp abd the grief he was getting?
Nottinghamâs finest pop duo are over the moon
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I say so a lot of it did. Coventry is horrific i think only the cathedral survived the war. Derby and Brum are awful dull places too
Some awful eejits out there
Football fans are scum
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Calm down Kelvin.
Has that Nottingham Forest scab that headbutted poor Billy Sharp been apprehended yet?
Calling Forest fans scabs is very original mate, did you come up with it all by yourself
Had a great day out at the FA Cup Final in 1991 calling out the scabs.
Youâre a strange one 
You man the picket line there Dan, let the rest of us get back to work.
Maybe Iâm been a bit harsh. The club and Brian Clough apparently supported the strike. It was just the Nottingham Forest fan base that were the scabs.
The atmosphere at Bramall Lane will be supercharged when Sheffield United and Nottingham Forest run out to do battle in the first leg of their Championship semi-final play-off this weekend.
Not only are the Premier League ambitions of two historic clubs and a promotion dividend of more than ÂŁ100million on the line, but matches between the Blades and the Reds reverberate with almost 100 years of history.
Last time the two sides met at this stage of the play-offs was 19 years ago. United battled back from two goals down in the second leg, to snatch a 4-3 win in extra time on a crazy, raucous night in Sheffield, in 2003.
âWhen I look back now, it was one of the best atmospheres I ever played in,â the Blades goalkeeper, Paddy Kenny, told Sportsmail as he reflected on the 5-4 aggregate win, masterminded by Neil Warnock.
Michael Brown, who scored Unitedâs first goal told the BBC he loved the fixture during his four years with the club and was looking forward to this game.
âIt has a history and a bit of spice to it,â recalled Brown. Saturdayâs encounter will be no different.
Sheffield and Nottingham have an unusual and lesser-known rivalry in British football, but it is no less visceral for that.
It is not born of local competition, since 32 miles of the M1 separate the two cities. There is no religious legacy, like Rangers and Celtic, or class war. This is an enmity that can be traced to a national coal mining dispute in the 1920s and is still rooted in the hostility of the 1984 minersâ strike. It lives on in the memory of older fans - and in folklore for the rest.
In both strikes, Notts miners took their own path and elected to work, while Yorkshire and the rest of the country downed tools with deep-seated resentment towards the East Midlandsâ men.
As a result, perhaps victory is always a little sweeter in this fixture, which still echoes the divisions of the past in the Bladesâ chants of âScab, scab, scab!â and âWho let the miners down?â Swiftly followed by, âYou did? You did!â
âActually, I am not sure if they are referring to the 1984-85 minersâ strike or the 1926 minersâ strike, because the enmity goes far back,â joked Amanda Ball, a principal lecturer in journalism and public affairs at Nottingham Trent University, and a lifelong Bladesâ fan.
âThere is more of an edge, if it is Forest,â added Ball, who admits it will mean a little more beating their Nottingham rivals, compared to the other play-off contenders, Huddersfield Town and Luton.
âBut it is not just Sheffield United,â she explained. âIt is the same chants when any of the Yorkshire teams play Forest.â
The 1984 strike was a violent and bitter year-long dispute which saw coal miners across the UK walkout after the National Coal Board announced its intention to close 20 pits, which would cost 20,000 jobs.
The strike, which involved more than 200,000 miners nationwide, began at the Cortonwood colliery, near Rotherham, in South Yorkshire and pitched Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher against the trade unions.
Within days, the vast majority of men in almost every coalmining county responded to the strike call, but ultimately the Nottinghamshire coalfield kept working.
Men from the South Yorkshire branches of the National Union of Mineworkers, under the direction of NUM president Arthur Scargill, were sent to Nottinghamshire to fiercely picket the mine entrances.
South Yorkshire was militant with almost 100 per cent of miners out, but in Notts only 20 per cent supported the strike.
Since the governmentâs strategy to break the strike was to stockpile coal and keep some mines in production, Nottinghamshire miners were blamed for the capitulation and hardships that followed.
Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire became battlefields. Of more than 9,800 arrests nationwide during the strike, 2,417 were in Nottinghamshire and 1,533 in South Yorkshire, according to a Parliamentary answer issued in the weeks after the dispute ended.
Battle lines were drawn and the injustices â real and perceived - have never been forgotten and often not forgiven by those who lived through those desperate times.
People on both sides suffered and for many years afterwards, as the industry, already in decline, eventually collapsed.
Of course, a lot of fans are too young to remember those days, but the seismic political and social event sent shockwaves across generations. And some sense of grievance has survived in the tribal nature of football fandom, passed on from one group to the next.
â[Many fans] will know of these things that happened way back in the mists of time,â said Ball. 'It is like folklore; it is passed on through generations.
âI started taking my nephew to Bramall Lane when he was about 12,â Ball added. âWe sat in the family stand. The first time we played Forest he said to me, âwhy are they shouting âscabâ?â So, I had to explain to him.â
Although, there may be some evidence that the historical hostility is beginning to wane, almost 40 years on.
âThe League of Love and Hateâ, a fan survey, reported in Sportbible, that charts the shifting sands of fan rivalries, listed the Bladesâ fiercest rivals as Sheffield Wednesday and Leeds United in 2019, followed by local teams, Barnsley, Rotherham United and Doncaster Rovers.
But the survey results prompted surprise on Sheffield United fan forums.
âIâve always had Nottingham Forest in our âtop 5â and would pick Forest over Rotherham and exclude Doncaster altogether, just because teams are close doesnât mean theyâre a rival,â Whitsun Blade commented on the S24SU fan site.
âThereâs obviously historical rivalries but younger fans may not know about or feel that rivalry,â added another user, Sheffsteel.
âThen there are fashion trends where a set of results, or a set of events temporarily grows that rivalry to something very strong.â
Wherever Forest now sit on the Richter scale of rivalry, last weekend, Bladesâ fans were glued to their phones, even as they thrashed champions Fulham 4-0 to seal their own play-off place.
They wanted to know how Forest were faring at Hull City. And then an equaliser for the Tigers in the 94th minute set up this mouth-watering tie.
On the Nottinghamshire side of the divide, Forest fans still rank Sheffield United as one of their most significant rivals, behind Derby County and Leicester City, in fan surveys.
Their dislikes are very neatly reflected in the Reds own chant: âWe hate Derby County, we hate Leicester too, we hate Sheffield United⌠Forest we love youâ.
âIt is a quirk of football⌠the folklore of the game,â reflected Paul Severn, 41, one of the organisers of the Nottingham Forest Supportersâ Trust, who points out he would have been four-years-old at the time of the dispute.
âThey will be calling us Scabs for a change. YAWN,â predicted Forest fan, Andrew McGuinn, probably correctly, on his Twitter account after the result at the MKM Stadium (formerly the KC). âThe majority of them werenât born when the strike was on.â
Forest fans could claim they have been treated unfairly in this dispute for almost four decades.
In some accounts of the minersâ strike, the Notts workforce were prepared to cross the lines when they were manned by flying pickets from Wales.
But when the Yorkshire miners pitched up, with a more aggressive attitude, not to mention a bit of previous in earlier strikes, they refused to be bullied, and the Nottsâ men went back to work.
But regardless of what was going on in the industrial dispute, their own club actually supported the miners in 1984.
In his autobiography, former Labour cabinet minister, Peter Hain, recalled how Forestâs then manager, the legendary Brian Clough, backed the striking miners with his own cash. Hain set up the Minersâ Families Christmas Appeal to aid stricken families in December 1984.
âI persuaded Britainâs best known football manager and Labour voter, Brian Clough, to make the first donation,â he recalled.
âSince he was coach to Nottingham Forest and the Nottinghamshire miners had split from their union to work on through the strike, his support was very significant and I waved his cheque at our launch press conference.â
In fact, Clough had a history of supporting miners that stretched back more than a decade. In a previous strike in 1972, he took his Derby County squad to man the picket lines at a colliery in Spondon, Derbyshire, over two days.
In the eighties, he joined marches and as ever, stories are legion of his colourful interventions.
In one, striking miners were collecting donations in the vicinity of the City Ground, when they were invited to a Forest board meeting by Clough, to put their case.
âAt the end, he gave them a substantial personal cheque,â a correspondent to The Guardian wrote in 2009, 25 years after the dispute. âThe following Saturday they all returned to the ground to help clear snow from the pitch to enable that dayâs game to go ahead.â
But details never got in the way of a good argument. So, it was perhaps fortunate Forest and Sheffield United didnât meet during those turbulent years. But Clough did take his Forest team to Bramall Lane in the week before Christmas in the 1990-91 season.
It was a highly-charged affair. The Blades, bottom of Division One and without a win in 16 games, recovered from 2-1 down to win 3-2 thanks to a towering header from Brian Deane in front of 20,000 fans, sparking a huge pitch invasion.
It turned out to be the beginning of a glorious run under manager Dave Bassett, which secured Unitedâs survival in the top flight that season.
Since the minersâ strike, which ended on March 6, 1985, Sheffield United have won 14 and lost 10 of their matches with Forest. Ten games have been drawn.
Forest fans will be hoping that this match is a less emotional encounter than either of those in 1990 or 2003. Both games this season ended in 1-1 draws and a similar scoreline at Bramall Lane might suit Forest with the second leg to play at home this time around.
âI think it will be really tight,â said Severn, who is lucky enough to have a ticket for both legs. âNil-nil in the first leg and then us to pinch it at the City Ground,â he hoped.
Whoever prevails, there will be another hurdle to clear. After their 2003 success in the semi-final, United went down 3-0 to Wolves at Wembley. This time, Huddersfield or Luton await â and the riches of the Premier League beckon.
âHourihane - Stay where you areâ - how spot on was this 
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Who says penalties are a lotteryâŚ
Hourihane went straight down the middle and scored when Ireland lost out to Slovakia in Bratislava 4-2 on penalties. Of course we wouldnât have even needed penalties if he had not missed a sitter in ET. Samba not only stayed in the middle but was ready for the low trajectory of shot that Hourihane applied that night in Bratislava.
Fair play to Samba for having his homework done and that incredible save in Extra time as well. Incredible performance.
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Shocking stuff from Ollie McBurney hereâŚ.
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In his leg brace 
.
Same lad was mad for action when the handbags kicked off over Spence
Edit. His Wikipedia tells me Oli is fond of an auld scrap
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