Nottingham Forest legend Tony Woodcock on the magic of Brian Clough’s miracles

Never again will a team rise from mid-table obscurity in the second tier to win the title and European Cup like Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest, but Trent end legend Tony Woodcock says they can dare to dream again

One of his team-mates allegedly slept with a revolver under his pillow, and in the box he was always quick on the draw.

Tony Woodcock will miss Nottingham Forest ’s big day out at Wembley on Sunday because he will be at the Berlin Film Festival – not as a hipster movie critic but as an award nominee. But the Tricky Trees legend hopes Nuno Espirito Santo’s remarkable season culminates in another miracle to go with the supernatural wonders unfurled by Brian Clough in the club’s golden era.

If Nuno the Nino leads Forest into the Champions League and the FA Cup final, he will be walking in the footsteps of Old Big ‘Ead and the underdogs in Garibaldi red he turned into European Cup winners.

Woodcock’s exploits as a home-grown striker who conquered Europe with Forest, before his reincarnation as an English football pioneer with Cologne in the German Bundesliga, were enshrined in the film Local Heroes. Now he has joined the podcast market, forging a holy trinity with former Forest defender Viv Anderson and England warhorse Peter Reid called The Grumpy Old Men of Football, hosted by TV presenter Rob McCaffrey.

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It remains unclear which one is Victor Meldrew, which one is Arkwright and which one is Compo, although Reid claims fans called him “Daniel Craig” when he was Thailand’s national coach, which begs the question: Do they have Specsavers in Bangkok?

But make no mistake, Woodcock will be nearer gratified than grumpy if Forest beat Manchester City.

“Ten years ago there was a film about Forest’s success under Brian Clough called I Believe In Miracles, and the people of Nottingham are starting to believe another miracle is unfolding on their doorstep,” he said. “It’s a lift for the whole city and generations who have been brought up on the tales and exploits of Cloughie’s miracle men – and now they are almost living the dream themselves.

“Unfortunately I won’t be at Wembley for the semi-final because Local Heroes (another documentary about Forest’s champions) has been nominated for an award in Berlin, but I’ll be hoping they can add another chapter to a remarkable season.”

Woodcock scored 46 goals in 139 appearances for Forest, and Clough’s golden aura never fades from an age when football was about glory, not fleecing supporters for £71 a ticket.

“The achievement of going form mid-table in the old Second Division to promotion, winning the title and lifting the European Cup in the space of three years is never going to be beaten,” said Woodcock, now 69. “Eight or nine games in during the championship-winning campaign, Ipswich came to the City Ground and their captain Mick Mills – my future England team-mate – predicted our bubble would burst.

“We beat them 4-0 and it wrote Cloughie’s team talks for the rest of the season. All he would say was, ‘Hey, lads, is it today that the bubble bursts?’ We played some good stuff and remained faithful to Cloughie’s famous line that if God had wanted us to play football up in the air, he would have put grass in the sky.

“But if anyone wanted to mix it, and turn games into a physical battle, we could look after ourselves. Kenny Burns came in from Birmingham City with a reputation as a hard man, a wild man, a bit of a thug. The rumours were that he used to sleep with a gun under his pillow. Can you imagine that? A footballer with a revolver under the bed!

“We used to put him in his place by pinning him down and giving him a playful slap, me grabbing his right arm, Viv Anderson getting his right arm, and we managed to restrain him until we lapsed into panic mode: How are we going to get out of the room in one piece when he’s released?

“But Kenny was a great character to have on your side, and Cloughie’s conversion of him from centre-forward to centre-back was pure genius. They were magical times when the manager would take us off to Majorca – ‘Bring your passports, lads, we’re going to Cala Millor’ – and his assistant Peter Taylor referred to their favourite resort as Forest’s ‘branch office.’

“For young, single lads like myself and Viv, it was fantastic to be off the leash. But some of the married lads got a bit of a tongue-lashing from their wives, and Cloughie would placate them by sending each wife a bunch of flowers.

“When I look back now, I still wonder how he worked his magic. When I signed for Cologne, there were 6,000 people at my first training session in this super-modern complex. At Forest, the European Cup winners trained in a field by the Trent and Cloughie used to lead us through stinging nettles and concrete slabs in the car park.

“I always wanted the star syndrome as a footballer, but the German postal service begged me to collect my mail from the sorting office because the postman was struggling to deliver 2,000 letters to my door.”

“The Grumpy Old Men of Football Podcast, featuring Tony Woodcock, Viv Anderson, Peter Reid. All episodes available now on YouTube here

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