Through the seasons before us..

A big thanks to Mike who emailed this picture to me – further to the Introduction to Smoulderwood article, he found this interesting nugget of evidence to suggest that all was perhaps not as it would seem with our charismatic manager!

Well, okay – it’s an amusing picture of a younger Colin Calderwood with his hand on some unfortunate be-moustached gentleman’s tackle!  The picture was original hosted here, which is a collection of similarly compromising pictures of notable sports heroes!

Do I think this invalidates my theories about the smouldering one? Absolutely not – but it’s still a good cheap laugh!  Cheers Mike!

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I clicked onto this article earlier, and whilst in itself it’s fairly inoccuous in itself, it falls foul of the thing that annoys me a lot about media coverage of Forest – particularly during the early stages of the FA Cup.  Did you notice, if you clicked the link, how we are described in the opening paragraph of the story?  It’s basically a general story about the second round draw of the FA Cup, plus the site is called ‘Talking Soccer’ – Soccer, frankly, is a phrase that is only appropriate for ignorant Americans or Rugby fans.

Former European Champions Nottingham Forest will face another of the games minnows in the Second Round of this season’s FA Cup.

Forest brushed past Yeading with ease at the weekend in the world’s most illustrious Cup competition, Conference South side Salisbury will provide the opposition in the next round.

So there it is – did you spot it? Former European Champions, it’s up there with Twice European Cup winners and a myriad of other phrases that highlight our spectacular fall from grace.  The other thing is referring to our opponents as minnows – and the reason it annoys me is that this is precisely the attitude us Forest fans are accused of having by the supporters of other teams.  We don’t – just because the media or lazy bloggers write comments like that, doesn’t mean we think it!

The first thing I decided (much as I did for the Yeading game) was that it was bound to be televised, and we were bound to lose – I still reckon that for Salisbury too, such is the way of ‘the magic of the FA cup’ – a phrase that becomes a lot less magical when you’re subjected to the first two rounds of the tournament.  We’re bound to slip up, aren’t we?  But well, that’s fine – and if we lose then fair play to Salisbury, but it wouldn’t be minnows beating former-European champions, it would be a Conference League South team beating a League One team – still a giantkilling, still a great achievement, but not quite as sensational as the press would have you believe.

Now I am very proud of our history, indeed, the banner on the site used to have Trevor Francis’ goal, Cloughie and Peter Taylor and John McGovern holding aloft the European Cup.  I am certainly not advocating it be forgotten, that would be Kinnear-like (“Take down those pictures of when you were good!”), we should cherish our history and be fiercely proud of it, but lazy journalists really should come up with something other than this to refer to whenever Forest are playing a team they perceive as more lowly.

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