WHEN FOREST RULED EUROPE

With continental competition set to return to the City Ground this term, FFT relives the story of how Old Big 'Ead captured Old Big Ears and then retained it the following season

- Steve Anglesey

Things were moving somewhat slowly in Nottingham, as 1974 dissolved into 1975. Not just outside, where pit smoke still spiked the air, but inside the Palais nightclub. A 1920s revolving dancefloor moved the various perms, flares and star-jumpers past your table at a rather stately pace as the disc jockey played the maudlin, chugging Billy, Don't Be A Hero by local group Paper Lace.

At the bar, a group of lads passed a petition around. It was handed to a 19-year-old carpet-fitter from Long Eaton, who read 'We, the undersigned, ask Nottingham Forest Football Club to appoint Brian Clough as manager', and looked down through the hundreds of signatures, before adding his own. The petition was soon presented at the City Ground. Things were about to start moving a lot faster.

Several decades on, as he spoke to FFT, that carpet-fitter pondered the hurricane that was about to descend on an unsuspecting city. "It was ridiculous," Garry Birtles said. "Ridiculous but great.

Ridiculously great." The hurricane's name was Brian Howard Clough. It made landfall at the City Ground on January 6, 1975, unable to do much damage to a place already in ruins.

Thirteenth in Division Two, Forest's Christmas present to their fans had been a 2-0 home defeat to local rivals Notts County. Promising striker Tony Woodcock was about to be sold on to Lincoln City. Disenchanted midfielders Martin O'Neill and John Robertson were on the transfer list. "The players could do well one week, but they couldn't keep it up," said manager Allan Brown. "It was like something inbred in the club." A ramshackle edifice of tin and wood, the City Ground had just one modern stand, and that was only because its predecessor had burned down in 1968.