As the cold winter gripped England early in 1978, so many games were being called off (including, almost, the previous weekend's match v Wolves) it was becoming a bit of a gamble to even set off for a match, especially an away game. So, as we drove up the M1 north from Nottinghamshire to the biggest city in Yorkshire, Leeds, we had fingers crossed (metaphorically) that the game would even go ahead.
This was the League Cup semi-final, uncharted territory for Forest. The Reds' quarter final win at Bury was already their best progress in the competition since its inception in 1960, so this was a real bonus. The prospect of a visit to Wembley, unthinkable a few months ago, was now within touching distance. It was the first of a two-legged final so all we needed, it seemed, was to keep a clean sheet, get a nil nil draw and, surely, Forest could finish Leeds off in the second leg at the City Ground.
I'll get to what happened shortly, but first I want to add little more to the history of Leeds United, a subject I covered quite fully in the previous blog for the league game back in November. I'll specifically look at their League Cup record. Also, as this post was written just a a fortnight after the sad death of the Leeds manager at the time, Jimmy Armfield, I will do a short write up about him too.
However, apart from that one League Cup win in 1968, Leeds' record in the competition was pretty poor. They had never even reached the quarter finals before or since that season.
Still, bad as Leeds' overall record in the competition was, it was still much better than Forest's who didn't even take part for four seasons and had never (until this season) been past the 4th round.
So the League Cup was Don Revie's first trophy for Leeds and set the tone for an amazing run of success. As I documented earlier, after he got the England job in 1974 the Leeds board made the astonishing decision - astonishing not only with the benefit of hindsight but also at the time too - of Our Brian as their new manager. His 54 (or 44, as the story goes) days in charge was traumatic to say the least and well documented elsewhere - again see my last blog for a half decent account.
He made his debut at Fratton Park, Portsmouth on Boxing Day, 1954 and had rings run around him by the Pompey winger Gordon Dale. No disgrace, though, as Blackpool were in a relegation fight and Portsmouth finished 3rd that season.
But the next season the roles were reversed and Blackpool finished runners up - their highest ever league position and Portsmouth were mid table.
Armfield was capped 43 times by England and made his debut at the Maracana stadium, Rio de Janeiro, in front of 120,000 fans in 1959. Here's some footage of the game. You can see Stanley Matthews dribbling rings round some of the Brazilian defence with Armfield in close attendance a couple of times.
He played for England in the World Cup in Chile in 1962 where he was convinced they'd win the tournament and was acclaimed by some as the best right back in the world at the time.
Look out for him here, in the biggest match of his career, the World Cup quarter final defeat against Brazil at Viña del Mar, where England lost 3-1...
Armfield played alongside the great Stanley Matthews for years and in this clip he reminisces on those times...
Unfortunately for Jimmy he got injured at the end of of the 1963-64 season giving George Cohen an extended run in the side and a chance to establish himself as Alf Ramsey's first choice. So, despite being in the 1966 World Cup winning squad, Armfield played no part in any of the games.
I never saw Jimmy Armfield play, even though I could have, theoretically, as his playing career overlapped with my fan-watching era by 112 days. Blackpool were in the first division (getting relegated) the same season I watched my first game at Forest (home to Liverpool) but Armfield missed the game at Forest earlier in the season - and I didn't go to the match anyway. Jimmy's last match for Blackpool was at home to West Ham United on 27th February 1971.
After retiring Armfield went into management at Bolton Wanderers from August 1971 until October 1974, where he won promotion for them back to the second division. Only Bruce Rioch has a better record (in terms of pts/game) than Armfield since that time.
Of course, his next managerial post was to follow in the footsteps of Brain Clough at Leeds United and Armfield did a really good job steadying the ship after Cloughie's traumatic time, taking them to the final of the European Cup where they lost 2-0 to Bayern Munich.
Here's that final - Armfield's biggest match as a manager...
Armfield made some good signings, notably Tony Currie and Bryan Flynn. He would retire from management at the end of this (1977-78) season though, making way for Jock Stein, the first of 33 (yes, thirty three) managers that have tried to run Leeds' team since then, including Allan Clarke Eddie Gray, Billy Bremner and Norman Hunter (but not Johnny Giles, Revie's preferred successor).
Note that only Harold Wilkinson and David O'Leary managed longer than Armfield since his time there.
After retirement from management Jimmy Armfield became one of the best known and most respected voices on the radio. He was a regular on BBC's Sports Report.
It's always sad when someone dies but particularly so when the person was obviously so well loved by everyone who knew them. As my old mate from Nuncargate, Chambo, would say. "He was a lovely man".
I'll end with Gary Lineker's BBC tribute to him. (You can stop listening when Shearer and Wright come on!)
So, despite our growing unbeaten run, with Leeds 4th in the current form table, just two behind Forest, the memory of that 1-0 win against us back in November and with Forest having to play a depleted side, this was going to be a very stiff challenge.
The previous evening, Liverpool had beaten Arsenal 2-1 at Anfield in the other semi-final.
My main memory of this game was the feeling of elation that Forest had far, far exceeded our expectations and were almost certainly though to Wembley after this monumental victory. I was hoping for a clean sheet and a draw and then a win at home but after this we were almost there.
We stood in the away section as we did last time but I have no recollection of anything scary. Perhaps the Leeds fans were so demoralised after seeing their team effectively put out of the cup, they just wanted to go away and drown their sorrows.
This was very unlike another League Cup semi-final I went to at Leeds just one year later, when I was back at university. I was one of four football fans, with Chesterfield, Southampton and Boro. So-called because that's who they supported. Actually, I think we did refer to the Southampton fan as Graham in those days. Anyway, we were all neutrals except Graham.
We watched the game - again the first leg - peacefully enough, Southampton had earned a 2-2 draw and so looked Wembley bound. Forest had beaten Watford 3-1 in their first leg and so looked set for another Wembley final (but more on that next season).
Walking back to the snow covered car park, back to Chesterfield's mini, I suddenly became aware that there were a bunch of "lads" following us. Realising we were walking away from the street lights and whatever police might be around I decided to stop, turn round and see what the problem was.
"What's up, lads?" I asked in my best North-Notts/Yorkshire accent.
"You Southampton?" They grunted
"No. We're Leeds fans. I'm from Mansfield. Been a Leeds fan since the Revie days" Which wasn't all that far off the truth.
"Where's y'scarves?" they spat
"Don't need one"
"What about him then?" They slobbered, as Graham, understandably nervous, headed off towards the car.
Boro chipped in about being from Yorkshire too, but it was too late. One of them had started to scamper after Graham and he, again understandably, decided to leg it. The others followed and soon they sped off into the dark leaving the three of us with a horrible dilemma.
We thought Graham would be ok because he was a long distance runner for the university but after waiting what must have been a half an hour we decided to head off to the police station and report the incident. Eventually they picked Graham up, completely beaten up by these low life Leeds thugs. They had apparently cornered him somewhere in the dark. Poor chap.
We drove back to Nottingham. Whatever "admiration" I still had for Leeds disappeared that night.
Anyway, back to 1978 and next up for Forest (we thought at the time) was Villa away in the league. That game ended up being a victim to the weather (as would the return leg of this match) so Forest's next game after this was QPR away in the F. A. Cup 5th Round.
This was the League Cup semi-final, uncharted territory for Forest. The Reds' quarter final win at Bury was already their best progress in the competition since its inception in 1960, so this was a real bonus. The prospect of a visit to Wembley, unthinkable a few months ago, was now within touching distance. It was the first of a two-legged final so all we needed, it seemed, was to keep a clean sheet, get a nil nil draw and, surely, Forest could finish Leeds off in the second leg at the City Ground.
I'll get to what happened shortly, but first I want to add little more to the history of Leeds United, a subject I covered quite fully in the previous blog for the league game back in November. I'll specifically look at their League Cup record. Also, as this post was written just a a fortnight after the sad death of the Leeds manager at the time, Jimmy Armfield, I will do a short write up about him too.
Leeds in the League Cup
The much maligned Don Revie, as I keep telling people, did a truly great job at Leeds. I think the evidence shows that when you compare his record against Stan Cullis, Bill Shankly, Matt Busby and Clough/Taylor at Derby, his is the best. (See my previous blog - link above - for the detail.)
His first piece of proper silverware for them - which was also Leeds' first ever trophy win - was the league cup, which they won in 1967-68 season, beating Arsenal in the final.
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| Final Programme - Bizarrely in the colours of the Lithuanian tricolor |
Here are some highlights of the game...
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| The first of many trophies for Leeds under Don Revie |
However, apart from that one League Cup win in 1968, Leeds' record in the competition was pretty poor. They had never even reached the quarter finals before or since that season.
Still, bad as Leeds' overall record in the competition was, it was still much better than Forest's who didn't even take part for four seasons and had never (until this season) been past the 4th round.
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| In 17 seasons, Forest had only gone further than Leeds in the League Cup thrice |
So the League Cup was Don Revie's first trophy for Leeds and set the tone for an amazing run of success. As I documented earlier, after he got the England job in 1974 the Leeds board made the astonishing decision - astonishing not only with the benefit of hindsight but also at the time too - of Our Brian as their new manager. His 54 (or 44, as the story goes) days in charge was traumatic to say the least and well documented elsewhere - again see my last blog for a half decent account.
So, who to steady the ship and, as Cloughie once said somewhere... "follow that!"
Who would it be?
Who would it be?
It was the genial and always popular Jimmy Armfield. As I write this, it's sad to think that he died just two weeks ago. So, I must pay my small tribute to the man that was always a pleasure to hear when he came on the radio as a pundit for all those years.
Jimmy Armfield
Jimmy Armfield was born in 1935 just 5 miles from the center of Manchester, in a town called Denton but his family were evacuated to Blackpool during the second world war, where he would play his entire club career, making 569 appearances, mainly as a right back.He made his debut at Fratton Park, Portsmouth on Boxing Day, 1954 and had rings run around him by the Pompey winger Gordon Dale. No disgrace, though, as Blackpool were in a relegation fight and Portsmouth finished 3rd that season.
But the next season the roles were reversed and Blackpool finished runners up - their highest ever league position and Portsmouth were mid table.
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| Young Jimmy Armfield |
Armfield was capped 43 times by England and made his debut at the Maracana stadium, Rio de Janeiro, in front of 120,000 fans in 1959. Here's some footage of the game. You can see Stanley Matthews dribbling rings round some of the Brazilian defence with Armfield in close attendance a couple of times.
He played for England in the World Cup in Chile in 1962 where he was convinced they'd win the tournament and was acclaimed by some as the best right back in the world at the time.
Look out for him here, in the biggest match of his career, the World Cup quarter final defeat against Brazil at Viña del Mar, where England lost 3-1...
Armfield played alongside the great Stanley Matthews for years and in this clip he reminisces on those times...
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| Always a Tangerine |
Unfortunately for Jimmy he got injured at the end of of the 1963-64 season giving George Cohen an extended run in the side and a chance to establish himself as Alf Ramsey's first choice. So, despite being in the 1966 World Cup winning squad, Armfield played no part in any of the games.
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| Armfield, captain of England |
I never saw Jimmy Armfield play, even though I could have, theoretically, as his playing career overlapped with my fan-watching era by 112 days. Blackpool were in the first division (getting relegated) the same season I watched my first game at Forest (home to Liverpool) but Armfield missed the game at Forest earlier in the season - and I didn't go to the match anyway. Jimmy's last match for Blackpool was at home to West Ham United on 27th February 1971.
After retiring Armfield went into management at Bolton Wanderers from August 1971 until October 1974, where he won promotion for them back to the second division. Only Bruce Rioch has a better record (in terms of pts/game) than Armfield since that time.
Of course, his next managerial post was to follow in the footsteps of Brain Clough at Leeds United and Armfield did a really good job steadying the ship after Cloughie's traumatic time, taking them to the final of the European Cup where they lost 2-0 to Bayern Munich.
Here's that final - Armfield's biggest match as a manager...
Armfield made some good signings, notably Tony Currie and Bryan Flynn. He would retire from management at the end of this (1977-78) season though, making way for Jock Stein, the first of 33 (yes, thirty three) managers that have tried to run Leeds' team since then, including Allan Clarke Eddie Gray, Billy Bremner and Norman Hunter (but not Johnny Giles, Revie's preferred successor).
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| Leeds managers since Armfield |
Note that only Harold Wilkinson and David O'Leary managed longer than Armfield since his time there.
After retirement from management Jimmy Armfield became one of the best known and most respected voices on the radio. He was a regular on BBC's Sports Report.
It's always sad when someone dies but particularly so when the person was obviously so well loved by everyone who knew them. As my old mate from Nuncargate, Chambo, would say. "He was a lovely man".
I'll end with Gary Lineker's BBC tribute to him. (You can stop listening when Shearer and Wright come on!)
15 Unbeaten and counting
The last time Forest played at Elland Road, back in November, they lost 1-0 rather undeservedly after Hankin scored the only goal when Peter Shilton had been pole-axed in a collision. But the silver lining on that particular cloud was that Forest had not lost a match since.
Forest were only just starting on their famous 42 match unbeaten run in the league and they were currently on 15 league and cup games at the moment.
15 games unbeaten since we were last at Elland Road
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| 15 games unbeaten since we were last at Elland Road |
Leeds' Route to the Semi Final
Leeds' progress to the semi-final had been a little easier than ours. Where Forest played Two first Division sides, one second and one third, Leeds had played one first division side, one second, one third and one fourth.
Nevertheless, Leeds had been most impressive in their 3-1 win at promotion chasing Bolton and their 4-1 win at home to title contenders, Everton, in the quarter finals.
So, despite our growing unbeaten run, with Leeds 4th in the current form table, just two behind Forest, the memory of that 1-0 win against us back in November and with Forest having to play a depleted side, this was going to be a very stiff challenge.
The previous evening, Liverpool had beaten Arsenal 2-1 at Anfield in the other semi-final.
So that game remained very hard to pick a winner.
Teams
Once again, Forest had to cope with having three first team regulars cup tied - Peter Shilton, David Needham and Archie Gemmil so, as Larry Loyd, and presumably, Frank Clark, were still injured, John McGovern was grafted in as a temporary center half alongside Kenny Burns and John O'Hare came into midfield to play against the club that gave him such a miserable time during his brief spell there with Cloughie.
Leeds United
1 David Harvey, 2 Paul Reaney, 3 Frank Gray, 4 Peter Lorimer, 5 Keith Parkinson, 6 Paul Madeley, 7 Trevor Cherry, 8 Ray Hankin, 9 Tony Currie, 10 Eddie Gray, 11 Arthur Graham.
Goals: Eddie Gray 1.
Substitutions: Carl Harris (12) came on for Peter Lorimer(4).
Nottingham Forest
1 Chris Woods, 2 Viv Anderson, 3 Colin Barrett, 4 John McGovern, 5 John O'Hare, 6 Kenny Burns, 7 Martin O'Neill, 8 Ian Bowyer, 9 Peter Withe, 10 Tony Woodcock, 11 John Robertson.
Goals : John O'Hare 1, Peter Withe 2.
Attendance: 43,222
The Game
John McGovern seemed to slot in at the center of the back four next to Burns as if he'd played there all his career and Forest were never in much trouble. As the saying goes, Forest simply seemed to want it more.
The game was effectively killed by two goals in three minutes mid way through the first half. Both were scored by Peter Withe who couldn't score to save his life in the league at the time. The first after 19 minutes was slammed in Past David Harvey after a cross from Martin O'Neill and the second was a diving header from a Woodcock cross.
The game seems to have been televised but it looks like the only goal that has been put up on YouTube is this rare goal from Eddie Gray, who scored just seven minutes later to put Leeds back into the games, So here, at least, is that moment.
Things went badly for Leeds on the half hour mark when Peter Lorimer had to be replaced by Carl Harris with a thigh injury. So, 2-1 at half time.
In the second half Leeds put on some pressure but Forest still looked in control and extended their lead in the 75th minute when a seven-man passing move was finished off by John O'Hare. Sweet revenge for him after a torrid time at Elland Road under Cloughie and after he was sacked.
My main memory of this game was the feeling of elation that Forest had far, far exceeded our expectations and were almost certainly though to Wembley after this monumental victory. I was hoping for a clean sheet and a draw and then a win at home but after this we were almost there.
We stood in the away section as we did last time but I have no recollection of anything scary. Perhaps the Leeds fans were so demoralised after seeing their team effectively put out of the cup, they just wanted to go away and drown their sorrows.
This was very unlike another League Cup semi-final I went to at Leeds just one year later, when I was back at university. I was one of four football fans, with Chesterfield, Southampton and Boro. So-called because that's who they supported. Actually, I think we did refer to the Southampton fan as Graham in those days. Anyway, we were all neutrals except Graham.
We watched the game - again the first leg - peacefully enough, Southampton had earned a 2-2 draw and so looked Wembley bound. Forest had beaten Watford 3-1 in their first leg and so looked set for another Wembley final (but more on that next season).
Walking back to the snow covered car park, back to Chesterfield's mini, I suddenly became aware that there were a bunch of "lads" following us. Realising we were walking away from the street lights and whatever police might be around I decided to stop, turn round and see what the problem was.
"What's up, lads?" I asked in my best North-Notts/Yorkshire accent.
"You Southampton?" They grunted
"No. We're Leeds fans. I'm from Mansfield. Been a Leeds fan since the Revie days" Which wasn't all that far off the truth.
"Where's y'scarves?" they spat
"Don't need one"
"What about him then?" They slobbered, as Graham, understandably nervous, headed off towards the car.
Boro chipped in about being from Yorkshire too, but it was too late. One of them had started to scamper after Graham and he, again understandably, decided to leg it. The others followed and soon they sped off into the dark leaving the three of us with a horrible dilemma.
We thought Graham would be ok because he was a long distance runner for the university but after waiting what must have been a half an hour we decided to head off to the police station and report the incident. Eventually they picked Graham up, completely beaten up by these low life Leeds thugs. They had apparently cornered him somewhere in the dark. Poor chap.
We drove back to Nottingham. Whatever "admiration" I still had for Leeds disappeared that night.
Anyway, back to 1978 and next up for Forest (we thought at the time) was Villa away in the league. That game ended up being a victim to the weather (as would the return leg of this match) so Forest's next game after this was QPR away in the F. A. Cup 5th Round.
The Programme
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