Did you know that there is a team which has won more European Cups than domestic leagues? Inconceivable as it sounds, Nottingham Forest have been European champions twice and kings of England only once. A highly motivated group, led by an eccentric football purist, pulled off perhaps the greatest surprise in the history of the European Cup – and put the East Midlands city at the centre of the football universe.
Forest had been on the up since outspoken manager Brian Clough arrived in January 1975. Bruised by his short, unhappy experience in charge of Leeds United earlier that season, the mouthy maverick was determined to prove he wasn’t past it. Cloughie had won the league in charge of Derby County in 1972, but controversy in the European Cup semi-final loss at Juventus a year later left him with unfinished business in UEFA’s top tournament. In his first campaign with Forest, he guided a decidedly average squad to a ninth-place finish in the second division. Then, when Cloughie hired his old Derby right-hand man Peter Taylor, Forest began to fire.
The combination of Clough and Taylor grew unbeatable. First, they won promotion to the first division, before lifting the league title a year later. They triumphed with possession-based, on-the-deck football, fastidiously free of cynical foul play or divas in the dressing room (Clough aside).
“If you move the ball quickly, you can catch the opposition out,” explains John McGovern, Forest captain under Clough. “You pass the ball to one of your team-mates quickly and accurately at the right time. He receives the ball, controls it and then he can do something with it before he passes it onto another of his team-mates. It’s just the easiest way, the quickest way and the most effective way to play football.”
The simplicity of Clough’s approach not only won Forest the league in 1978, but that utterly unexpected achievement also earned them entry into the European Champion Clubs’ Cup. Little was expected from the Tricky Trees, but it wasn’t just their quirky name and shiny shirts (a rarity back then) that made them special.
With the exception of million-pound-man Trevor Francis, there were few stars in the sides that won the European Cup in 1979 and then again in 1980. They numbered mostly dependable journeymen or promising misfits, transformed into household names by Clough and Taylor. Old Big ‘Ead, as Clough was known, delighted the press with his philosophy, bluntness and idiosyncrasies. Taylor, who avoided the limelight, was the master of spotting players with potential. Plus, crucially, he was the only person who could tell Clough to get a grip or wind his neck in.
Nottingham is the smallest city to produce a European Cup-winning side, and the club with football’s most autobiographical badge are still famous across the globe. There is a posh cocktail bar in central Milan named after them. Amusingly, their two-year Euro-dominance initially took them a mere 110 miles ‘up the road’ to Anfield but culminated in a second consecutive victory in the final against Hamburg at the Santiago Bernabéu in May 1980.
Here, three of the players from that first European Cup-winning team – captain John McGovern, striker Garry Birtles and winger John Robertson – tell us about that heady first season in the competition.
McGovern had started his career under Clough at fourth division Hartlepool United, and the selfless, hard-working central midfielder had followed his manager to Derby then Leeds before answering his call once again at Forest in February 1975. Robertson was already a fixture at the City Ground when Clough arrived and his direct running and pinpoint crossing from the left wing made him a mainstay of the side for an incredible 243 consecutive games between December 1976 and December 1980.
Birtles’ story was perhaps the most extraordinary. The Nottingham lad was working as a builder when he was signed by Clough from local non-league side Long Eaton United aged 20 in 1976. He scored his first Forest goal in their first game in the European Cup, a 2-0 first-round win against holders Liverpool, and finished the season with six goals in the competition, scoring in every round against AEK Athens, Grasshoppers and FC Köln as Forest blazed a trail through Europe the likes of which had never been seen before and will likely never be seen again.
Forest’s first European test could not have been more difficult.
Garry Birtles: Nobody gave us a chance. We were looking forward to maybe an Italian game, a French game, a Spanish game. We drew Liverpool, the holders.
John Robertson: Liverpool were the European champions at the time. I remember being on holiday with Tony Woodcock in the Caribbean and making a phone call to find out who we’d got. The person on the other end told me it was Liverpool and I thought, “You’re joking, aren’t you? God, we don’t even get the chance to get abroad!” But we’d played them three times the previous season and hadn’t been beaten, so they wouldn’t have been looking forward to it.
John McGovern: Disappointment. We were listening to the draw and saying, “I want to go to Spain; no, I want to go to Germany.” And then it’s Liverpool; we’re not even going out of the country. This is supposed to be called the European Cup and we’ve got Liverpool.
Forest won the first leg 2-0 at the City Ground. Birtles opened the scoring on 27 minutes then full-back Colin Barrett added a second three minutes from time.
McGovern: Brian Clough never spoke about the opposition; it was about how we do, what we do. That will make the opposition worry about us. Clough said, “Listen, you know what they’ll be saying in their dressing room: ‘Not them again’,” so it acted in our favour. We’d actually got the better of Liverpool by pipping them to the league championship the year before and also beating them in the League Cup over two games. We went into those matches quite confident; not cocky, but confident that we’d beaten them the year before.
Birtles: I think I got six in that particular campaign. It was incredible. Clough had said: “Get in the box, get in the box” before the game. So that was it, I got in the box. [For the second goal] Phil Thompson came across and half-tackled. I just turned and didn’t look up and put it into an area where I thought somebody might be. There was a great header from Tony Woodcock. Colin Barrett was, for some reason, in the penalty box. I don’t think Mr Clough and Mr Taylor were impressed to start off with, but they were when it finally went in the back of the net.
A goalless draw at Anfield in the second leg was enough to advance.
Robertson: It was brilliant, brilliant, brilliant to be part of, a great experience; you’ve knocked out the champions in the first round. I remember [Liverpool manager] Bob Paisley saying that he thought we could win it and I couldn’t believe that. “He thinks we can win the European Cup?” Because the European Cup, for me, was about Puskás and Di Stéfano from the Real Madrid v Eintracht Frankfurt game in 1960. I never thought you could go and play in the same competition as them.
Birtles: The hardest job was probably out of the way at that particular point. Still, nobody expected us to go anywhere. We were playing the best in Europe then. They were the respective winners from every country. It was just a roller-coaster ride. Being a local boy, all your friends get involved, you go down the pub and it’s the talk of the town. It was just incredible. The whole journey was magnificent.
Next up, AEK Athens as Forest hit their stride.
Robertson: We won 2-1 over there and 5-1 in the second game. We were awesome in those two games and played really well and a 7-2 aggregate would explain it.
Birtles: Ferenc Puskás was the manager of AEK Athens then. I remember scoring the [second] goal [in Athens]. Frank Clark very rarely got across the halfway line and he panicked a little bit and gave it to me. I side-stepped the defender and put it in. Then we came back here and I scored [twice] in the second leg as well.
A 4-1 win at home to Zürich side Grasshoppers set Forest up to reach the semi-finals 5-1 on aggregate. There they met German champions FC Köln and the first leg at the City Ground produced one of the great European Cup ties. On a swamp of a pitch, Köln jumped to an early 2-0 lead; Forest hit back with goals from Birtles, Ian Bowyer and Robertson, before a late leveller from Japanese substitute Yasuhiko Okudera turned the tie back in the German side’s favour.
McGovern: Our normal play was that after we kicked off, we rushed the opposition; we hustled and we didn’t give them time. What we found out was that Köln were a very good counterattacking side. When we went 2-0 down a lot of people might have written us off, but there was always that spirit and belief in the camp that if we get a goal back, we can get back into the match.
Birtles: It was a horrible pitch, it was a mud bath. They did go 2-0 up, they could have gone 3-0 up, they missed a decent chance. Then I got the header just to get us back into it. Then we got back in front somehow. John Robertson scored with a diving header. It was impossible to think that John Robertson could score with a diving header. He couldn’t head the ball to save his life. But he was there and he said: “I knew where you were going to put it in, I knew what you were going to do.” Once we got the momentum going, we looked comfortable.
McGovern: We got it back to 3-2 and then, inexplicably, Peter Shilton, who’s usually immaculate in goal, actually let one in.
Birtles: I think it was to do with the mud. I think it shot off the surface and deceived him.
Robertson: It was a bit of a blow, but, at the end of the day, you’ve got to forgive him for all the points he did save us and all the times he got us through. He was a world-class goalkeeper. In my eyes, probably the best there’s been; we forgave him for that one.
Ian Bowyer got the all-important away goal in Köln, midway through the second half.
McGovern: So we then had to go to Germany in the second leg and win in Cologne. But again, there was no real fear, it wasn’t as if we were a goal down. We knew that with the ability we had and the belief we had in each other, we’d get a goal and get back into the game, so we managed to pull that one off.
Robertson: We always thought we were capable of going over to Germany and winning. It was a really difficult game. We knew that once we had something to hang on to, we always felt we had a chance. Once we got the goal, we defended brilliantly.
Birtles: Everybody said: “You’ve got no chance away from home.” Apart from Peter Taylor who said: “If you’re writing us off, think again.” Those words always stick in your mind because we were good in that second leg over there. Shilton was the best goalkeeper in the world, without a doubt. He was fantastic. He and the defence on that particular night in Cologne were magnificent. Larry Lloyd kicked their centre-forward, Dieter Müller, and he went off injured after 15 minutes I think, so that was one threat gone. There was a sign when we walked in about selling tickets for the final afterwards. Somebody translated it for us and that gave us a little bit of a lift. We thought: “Right, OK then. You think you’ve got us, but think again.”
Two months earlier Brian Clough had shocked the British football by signing Trevor Francis from Birmingham City for a record £1m. The striker had been ineligible to play in the European Cup up to this point, but would make his debut in the final.
Birtles: There was panic. Especially from the strikers, me and Tony Woodcock, because Trevor’s a fantastic player. He’d started his career young and he was the boy wonder. His levels went up and up and we just worried if our position was under threat. Luckily, at that point, it wasn’t. Trevor came in and played on the right in that final and, of course, the rest is history. He scored the goal and won the cup for us. I remember when he first came, he was told to make the tea for all the lads. Trevor was great in the dressing room. He wasn’t, “Right, I’m the first £1 million man.” He just mingled in with the rest of us, got on with it and enjoyed every minute.
McGovern: An outstanding sum of money in those days, but when you go and score the winning goal in the final, nobody discusses: “Well, he cost a million pounds, do you think he was really worth that?” That’s taken care of in one blow.
Famed for his unique man-management style, Clough knew how to get the best out of his players, including calming a nervous Birtles ahead of the final against Malmö in Munich.
Birtles: I was the second-youngest player. I’m two days older than Viv Anderson. I was as nervous as anything. We were at the hotel and the gaffer said: “Right, we’re meeting in the garden of the hotel,” before the bus went. So we were sitting out there and he came down and he could see I was nervous. Before a game, I had this thing where I didn’t shave. I didn’t have a beard because he wouldn’t let me grow a beard, but it was stubble. I wasn’t going to shave it until after the game. He said: “Gaz, what’s that on your chin?” I said: “I always do it gaffer, it’s superstition.” He said: “Get upstairs, get it shaved off now.” I said: “I can’t, all my stuff is on the coach. I packed it all away.” He said: “Right, has anybody got any aftershave for Gaz? I’ve got a razor up in my room.” Chris Woods, the reserve goalkeeper – because goalkeepers carry those little bags round with them – had aftershave. So I had to go up to the gaffer’s room, borrow his razor and shave it all off. I had pieces of tissue on me because I was so nervous and I was trying to shave. Looking back, I wondered why he’d done that, but he’s a great man-manager. He didn’t want me starting that game in that state. It took my mind off it. Then we were on the coach. The next minute we were in the stadium and in the build-up to it, we were in the moment. I remember that particular time in that garden like it was yesterday and thankfully he sorted me out.
Forest struggled to break down Bob Houghton’s Malmö side until Robertson crossed for Francis to head in the only goal shortly before half-time.
McGovern: Heads or tails, that was my responsibility as captain. Try and win the toss because you’d take that much stick from the players: “You’ve lost again, you’ve lost the toss again.” There was no more responsibility on me as captain going into that match than there was on any of the other players. Go out and show what you can do and try and please the supporters that have spent all of the money to come over here to watch you.
Birtles: Some of the stories my pals tell me: I got them tickets and they got there. They begged, stole and borrowed to get to the final. Nottingham was buzzing, it was crazy. Nothing like that had ever happened in a sporting sense, I suppose. You try to buy in to that. But the final was not entertaining for the fans. They were a very big, physical side, they just put ten men behind the ball and said, “Right, break us down.”
McGovern: We weren’t as fluent as we had been, although you have to give Malmö some credit for that. But then eventually John Robertson produces yet another piece of magic and lays on the perfect cross for Trevor Francis to score. I would say we were one of the hardest teams to get back at once we had gone a goal up. We didn’t want to give anything away, we were a mean side when it came to keeping the opposition out because the work rate of the players to help each other was phenomenal.
Birtles: We did struggle to break them down. I should’ve scored early on. I was one-on-one with their defender, the keeper came out, I lifted it over him and it landed on the roof of the net. I thought, “It’s going to be one of those days.” I’d scored in every other game in the build-up, but then the genius that is John Robertson got the ball out wide, put a wonderful cross in, which he did on many occasions. If you look across the box there are four of us attacking: one at the near post, another one in the middle, and I was the third one in line and I was going to go for it knowing that I probably couldn’t have got it on target. All of a sudden, in the corner of my eye, I saw this red flash and, obviously, it was Trevor and he scored the goal. It was a great header. He had to really twist himself round and get it in the roof of the net. Let the celebrations begin.
Robertson: The goal! The goal! I remember having to stretch for the ball Ian Bowyer sent to me. I thought I was going to let it run out, but I managed to get a hold of it. Whenever I got the ball, I was always doubled up on, but this was my first chance to get at them. I got the cross in and Trevor made up a lot of ground and scored. It’s amazing, we had about four or five players in the box at that time. I think that’s as good a compliment to me as anything, the fact that they expected it to come in. I remember peeking to see where it went but Trev made up a lot of ground and it was brilliant when it went in the net.
McGovern: Once we were 1-0 up, it was just a case of, “Can we get another one?” But the feeling generally, when we went into the dressing room was that we were a little bit disappointed because we wanted to put on a show for the supporters. We wanted to go out and absolutely bury Malmö. We wanted to beat them four or five to nil. You come off and it’s 1-0, you just think, “We’d just wish we had done a bit more for the supporters.”
Birtles: They didn’t really provide much of a threat. We should’ve wrapped it up in the second half, [but] didn’t. It doesn’t matter: 1-0 to Nottingham Forest, champions of Europe, and what it meant to the city of Nottingham after that was unreal.
McGovern: If you had come into the dressing room after the match, it was very quiet. Clough was nonchalant as well. “This was it, job done. OK, let’s go off and quietly celebrate with our own family and ourselves.” My dad had died when I was a youngster, he never ever saw me play football and strangely enough, just a vision of my dad came straight into my mind when I was being presented with the cup. People said that I wasn’t really smiling but it was a reflection of wishing that my dad had been there. Like most sons, I loved my dad when he was around, although my mum enjoyed the glory. I just wished my dad had been there. I don’t know why the thoughts came into my mind. But it did.
Birtles: Clough took our medals off us in the dressing room after. We thought he was winding us up. We won the European Cup, sat down with our winners’ medals and he said, “I want all your medals.” Why? We didn’t ask the question, because you never asked Brian Clough why. He took them away and then gave them back to us in pre-season. A weird thing. He never told us why.
The trophy parade around Nottingham will live long in the memory.
Birtles: We started at Holme Pierrepont, the watersports centre where the bus was, and Larry Lloyd and a couple of others were thinking, “Nobody is going to come out and see us.” We were panicking a little bit because we thought nobody would come and see us and we were all on this bus looking like lemons going through Nottingham and there’d be a sparse crowd. But all of a sudden, as we started going through the Meadows, through the Embankment, it started to mount and mount. There were more and more people, and once we got to the square, it was just staggering. There were people as far back as you could see. You think, “Crikey, we’ve achieved something here.” People used to say when you’re on holiday, “Where are you from?” “Oh, I’m from Nottingham.” “Oh, Robin Hood.” But once we’d won that trophy, you went away: “Oh, Brian Clough, Nottingham Forest.” It’s great to hear those sorts of things when you’ve achieved that. I’m from a council estate in Nottingham. I was a floor layer, I was working in freezing cold conditions in the winter, building sites with no heat and everything. Then to suddenly play for your hometown team and within five years, win two European Cups, a League Cup, represent your country, win the European Young Player of the Year... That was how quickly it happened, how lucky I feel, how humble I feel because of it happening. It’s just crazy.
Robertson: It’s extraordinary. I think it is never going to be beaten. Starting in May 1977 we were in the second division and by May 1979 we are the European champions. It’s a very hard thing to accomplish and I think it’s a one-off. It was a sensation for a club like us. I believe we’re still the smallest city to ever win it. The best word I can say is ’sensational’.
Did you know that there is a team which has won more European Cups than domestic leagues? Inconceivable as it sounds, Nottingham Forest have been European champions twice and kings of England only once. A highly motivated group, led by an eccentric football purist, pulled off perhaps the greatest surprise in the history of the European Cup – and put the East Midlands city at the centre of the football universe.
Forest had been on the up since outspoken manager Brian Clough arrived in January 1975. Bruised by his short, unhappy experience in charge of Leeds United earlier that season, the mouthy maverick was determined to prove he wasn’t past it. Cloughie had won the league in charge of Derby County in 1972, but controversy in the European Cup semi-final loss at Juventus a year later left him with unfinished business in UEFA’s top tournament. In his first campaign with Forest, he guided a decidedly average squad to a ninth-place finish in the second division. Then, when Cloughie hired his old Derby right-hand man Peter Taylor, Forest began to fire.
The combination of Clough and Taylor grew unbeatable. First, they won promotion to the first division, before lifting the league title a year later. They triumphed with possession-based, on-the-deck football, fastidiously free of cynical foul play or divas in the dressing room (Clough aside).
“If you move the ball quickly, you can catch the opposition out,” explains John McGovern, Forest captain under Clough. “You pass the ball to one of your team-mates quickly and accurately at the right time. He receives the ball, controls it and then he can do something with it before he passes it onto another of his team-mates. It’s just the easiest way, the quickest way and the most effective way to play football.”
The simplicity of Clough’s approach not only won Forest the league in 1978, but that utterly unexpected achievement also earned them entry into the European Champion Clubs’ Cup. Little was expected from the Tricky Trees, but it wasn’t just their quirky name and shiny shirts (a rarity back then) that made them special.
With the exception of million-pound-man Trevor Francis, there were few stars in the sides that won the European Cup in 1979 and then again in 1980. They numbered mostly dependable journeymen or promising misfits, transformed into household names by Clough and Taylor. Old Big ‘Ead, as Clough was known, delighted the press with his philosophy, bluntness and idiosyncrasies. Taylor, who avoided the limelight, was the master of spotting players with potential. Plus, crucially, he was the only person who could tell Clough to get a grip or wind his neck in.
Nottingham is the smallest city to produce a European Cup-winning side, and the club with football’s most autobiographical badge are still famous across the globe. There is a posh cocktail bar in central Milan named after them. Amusingly, their two-year Euro-dominance initially took them a mere 110 miles ‘up the road’ to Anfield but culminated in a second consecutive victory in the final against Hamburg at the Santiago Bernabéu in May 1980.
Here, three of the players from that first European Cup-winning team – captain John McGovern, striker Garry Birtles and winger John Robertson – tell us about that heady first season in the competition.
McGovern had started his career under Clough at fourth division Hartlepool United, and the selfless, hard-working central midfielder had followed his manager to Derby then Leeds before answering his call once again at Forest in February 1975. Robertson was already a fixture at the City Ground when Clough arrived and his direct running and pinpoint crossing from the left wing made him a mainstay of the side for an incredible 243 consecutive games between December 1976 and December 1980.
Birtles’ story was perhaps the most extraordinary. The Nottingham lad was working as a builder when he was signed by Clough from local non-league side Long Eaton United aged 20 in 1976. He scored his first Forest goal in their first game in the European Cup, a 2-0 first-round win against holders Liverpool, and finished the season with six goals in the competition, scoring in every round against AEK Athens, Grasshoppers and FC Köln as Forest blazed a trail through Europe the likes of which had never been seen before and will likely never be seen again.
Forest’s first European test could not have been more difficult.
Garry Birtles: Nobody gave us a chance. We were looking forward to maybe an Italian game, a French game, a Spanish game. We drew Liverpool, the holders.
John Robertson: Liverpool were the European champions at the time. I remember being on holiday with Tony Woodcock in the Caribbean and making a phone call to find out who we’d got. The person on the other end told me it was Liverpool and I thought, “You’re joking, aren’t you? God, we don’t even get the chance to get abroad!” But we’d played them three times the previous season and hadn’t been beaten, so they wouldn’t have been looking forward to it.
John McGovern: Disappointment. We were listening to the draw and saying, “I want to go to Spain; no, I want to go to Germany.” And then it’s Liverpool; we’re not even going out of the country. This is supposed to be called the European Cup and we’ve got Liverpool.
Forest won the first leg 2-0 at the City Ground. Birtles opened the scoring on 27 minutes then full-back Colin Barrett added a second three minutes from time.
McGovern: Brian Clough never spoke about the opposition; it was about how we do, what we do. That will make the opposition worry about us. Clough said, “Listen, you know what they’ll be saying in their dressing room: ‘Not them again’,” so it acted in our favour. We’d actually got the better of Liverpool by pipping them to the league championship the year before and also beating them in the League Cup over two games. We went into those matches quite confident; not cocky, but confident that we’d beaten them the year before.
Birtles: I think I got six in that particular campaign. It was incredible. Clough had said: “Get in the box, get in the box” before the game. So that was it, I got in the box. [For the second goal] Phil Thompson came across and half-tackled. I just turned and didn’t look up and put it into an area where I thought somebody might be. There was a great header from Tony Woodcock. Colin Barrett was, for some reason, in the penalty box. I don’t think Mr Clough and Mr Taylor were impressed to start off with, but they were when it finally went in the back of the net.
A goalless draw at Anfield in the second leg was enough to advance.
Robertson: It was brilliant, brilliant, brilliant to be part of, a great experience; you’ve knocked out the champions in the first round. I remember [Liverpool manager] Bob Paisley saying that he thought we could win it and I couldn’t believe that. “He thinks we can win the European Cup?” Because the European Cup, for me, was about Puskás and Di Stéfano from the Real Madrid v Eintracht Frankfurt game in 1960. I never thought you could go and play in the same competition as them.
Birtles: The hardest job was probably out of the way at that particular point. Still, nobody expected us to go anywhere. We were playing the best in Europe then. They were the respective winners from every country. It was just a roller-coaster ride. Being a local boy, all your friends get involved, you go down the pub and it’s the talk of the town. It was just incredible. The whole journey was magnificent.
Next up, AEK Athens as Forest hit their stride.
Robertson: We won 2-1 over there and 5-1 in the second game. We were awesome in those two games and played really well and a 7-2 aggregate would explain it.
Birtles: Ferenc Puskás was the manager of AEK Athens then. I remember scoring the [second] goal [in Athens]. Frank Clark very rarely got across the halfway line and he panicked a little bit and gave it to me. I side-stepped the defender and put it in. Then we came back here and I scored [twice] in the second leg as well.
A 4-1 win at home to Zürich side Grasshoppers set Forest up to reach the semi-finals 5-1 on aggregate. There they met German champions FC Köln and the first leg at the City Ground produced one of the great European Cup ties. On a swamp of a pitch, Köln jumped to an early 2-0 lead; Forest hit back with goals from Birtles, Ian Bowyer and Robertson, before a late leveller from Japanese substitute Yasuhiko Okudera turned the tie back in the German side’s favour.
McGovern: Our normal play was that after we kicked off, we rushed the opposition; we hustled and we didn’t give them time. What we found out was that Köln were a very good counterattacking side. When we went 2-0 down a lot of people might have written us off, but there was always that spirit and belief in the camp that if we get a goal back, we can get back into the match.
Birtles: It was a horrible pitch, it was a mud bath. They did go 2-0 up, they could have gone 3-0 up, they missed a decent chance. Then I got the header just to get us back into it. Then we got back in front somehow. John Robertson scored with a diving header. It was impossible to think that John Robertson could score with a diving header. He couldn’t head the ball to save his life. But he was there and he said: “I knew where you were going to put it in, I knew what you were going to do.” Once we got the momentum going, we looked comfortable.
McGovern: We got it back to 3-2 and then, inexplicably, Peter Shilton, who’s usually immaculate in goal, actually let one in.
Birtles: I think it was to do with the mud. I think it shot off the surface and deceived him.
Robertson: It was a bit of a blow, but, at the end of the day, you’ve got to forgive him for all the points he did save us and all the times he got us through. He was a world-class goalkeeper. In my eyes, probably the best there’s been; we forgave him for that one.
Ian Bowyer got the all-important away goal in Köln, midway through the second half.
McGovern: So we then had to go to Germany in the second leg and win in Cologne. But again, there was no real fear, it wasn’t as if we were a goal down. We knew that with the ability we had and the belief we had in each other, we’d get a goal and get back into the game, so we managed to pull that one off.
Robertson: We always thought we were capable of going over to Germany and winning. It was a really difficult game. We knew that once we had something to hang on to, we always felt we had a chance. Once we got the goal, we defended brilliantly.
Birtles: Everybody said: “You’ve got no chance away from home.” Apart from Peter Taylor who said: “If you’re writing us off, think again.” Those words always stick in your mind because we were good in that second leg over there. Shilton was the best goalkeeper in the world, without a doubt. He was fantastic. He and the defence on that particular night in Cologne were magnificent. Larry Lloyd kicked their centre-forward, Dieter Müller, and he went off injured after 15 minutes I think, so that was one threat gone. There was a sign when we walked in about selling tickets for the final afterwards. Somebody translated it for us and that gave us a little bit of a lift. We thought: “Right, OK then. You think you’ve got us, but think again.”
Two months earlier Brian Clough had shocked the British football by signing Trevor Francis from Birmingham City for a record £1m. The striker had been ineligible to play in the European Cup up to this point, but would make his debut in the final.
Birtles: There was panic. Especially from the strikers, me and Tony Woodcock, because Trevor’s a fantastic player. He’d started his career young and he was the boy wonder. His levels went up and up and we just worried if our position was under threat. Luckily, at that point, it wasn’t. Trevor came in and played on the right in that final and, of course, the rest is history. He scored the goal and won the cup for us. I remember when he first came, he was told to make the tea for all the lads. Trevor was great in the dressing room. He wasn’t, “Right, I’m the first £1 million man.” He just mingled in with the rest of us, got on with it and enjoyed every minute.
McGovern: An outstanding sum of money in those days, but when you go and score the winning goal in the final, nobody discusses: “Well, he cost a million pounds, do you think he was really worth that?” That’s taken care of in one blow.
Famed for his unique man-management style, Clough knew how to get the best out of his players, including calming a nervous Birtles ahead of the final against Malmö in Munich.
Birtles: I was the second-youngest player. I’m two days older than Viv Anderson. I was as nervous as anything. We were at the hotel and the gaffer said: “Right, we’re meeting in the garden of the hotel,” before the bus went. So we were sitting out there and he came down and he could see I was nervous. Before a game, I had this thing where I didn’t shave. I didn’t have a beard because he wouldn’t let me grow a beard, but it was stubble. I wasn’t going to shave it until after the game. He said: “Gaz, what’s that on your chin?” I said: “I always do it gaffer, it’s superstition.” He said: “Get upstairs, get it shaved off now.” I said: “I can’t, all my stuff is on the coach. I packed it all away.” He said: “Right, has anybody got any aftershave for Gaz? I’ve got a razor up in my room.” Chris Woods, the reserve goalkeeper – because goalkeepers carry those little bags round with them – had aftershave. So I had to go up to the gaffer’s room, borrow his razor and shave it all off. I had pieces of tissue on me because I was so nervous and I was trying to shave. Looking back, I wondered why he’d done that, but he’s a great man-manager. He didn’t want me starting that game in that state. It took my mind off it. Then we were on the coach. The next minute we were in the stadium and in the build-up to it, we were in the moment. I remember that particular time in that garden like it was yesterday and thankfully he sorted me out.
Forest struggled to break down Bob Houghton’s Malmö side until Robertson crossed for Francis to head in the only goal shortly before half-time.
McGovern: Heads or tails, that was my responsibility as captain. Try and win the toss because you’d take that much stick from the players: “You’ve lost again, you’ve lost the toss again.” There was no more responsibility on me as captain going into that match than there was on any of the other players. Go out and show what you can do and try and please the supporters that have spent all of the money to come over here to watch you.
Birtles: Some of the stories my pals tell me: I got them tickets and they got there. They begged, stole and borrowed to get to the final. Nottingham was buzzing, it was crazy. Nothing like that had ever happened in a sporting sense, I suppose. You try to buy in to that. But the final was not entertaining for the fans. They were a very big, physical side, they just put ten men behind the ball and said, “Right, break us down.”
McGovern: We weren’t as fluent as we had been, although you have to give Malmö some credit for that. But then eventually John Robertson produces yet another piece of magic and lays on the perfect cross for Trevor Francis to score. I would say we were one of the hardest teams to get back at once we had gone a goal up. We didn’t want to give anything away, we were a mean side when it came to keeping the opposition out because the work rate of the players to help each other was phenomenal.
Birtles: We did struggle to break them down. I should’ve scored early on. I was one-on-one with their defender, the keeper came out, I lifted it over him and it landed on the roof of the net. I thought, “It’s going to be one of those days.” I’d scored in every other game in the build-up, but then the genius that is John Robertson got the ball out wide, put a wonderful cross in, which he did on many occasions. If you look across the box there are four of us attacking: one at the near post, another one in the middle, and I was the third one in line and I was going to go for it knowing that I probably couldn’t have got it on target. All of a sudden, in the corner of my eye, I saw this red flash and, obviously, it was Trevor and he scored the goal. It was a great header. He had to really twist himself round and get it in the roof of the net. Let the celebrations begin.
Robertson: The goal! The goal! I remember having to stretch for the ball Ian Bowyer sent to me. I thought I was going to let it run out, but I managed to get a hold of it. Whenever I got the ball, I was always doubled up on, but this was my first chance to get at them. I got the cross in and Trevor made up a lot of ground and scored. It’s amazing, we had about four or five players in the box at that time. I think that’s as good a compliment to me as anything, the fact that they expected it to come in. I remember peeking to see where it went but Trev made up a lot of ground and it was brilliant when it went in the net.
McGovern: Once we were 1-0 up, it was just a case of, “Can we get another one?” But the feeling generally, when we went into the dressing room was that we were a little bit disappointed because we wanted to put on a show for the supporters. We wanted to go out and absolutely bury Malmö. We wanted to beat them four or five to nil. You come off and it’s 1-0, you just think, “We’d just wish we had done a bit more for the supporters.”
Birtles: They didn’t really provide much of a threat. We should’ve wrapped it up in the second half, [but] didn’t. It doesn’t matter: 1-0 to Nottingham Forest, champions of Europe, and what it meant to the city of Nottingham after that was unreal.
McGovern: If you had come into the dressing room after the match, it was very quiet. Clough was nonchalant as well. “This was it, job done. OK, let’s go off and quietly celebrate with our own family and ourselves.” My dad had died when I was a youngster, he never ever saw me play football and strangely enough, just a vision of my dad came straight into my mind when I was being presented with the cup. People said that I wasn’t really smiling but it was a reflection of wishing that my dad had been there. Like most sons, I loved my dad when he was around, although my mum enjoyed the glory. I just wished my dad had been there. I don’t know why the thoughts came into my mind. But it did.
Birtles: Clough took our medals off us in the dressing room after. We thought he was winding us up. We won the European Cup, sat down with our winners’ medals and he said, “I want all your medals.” Why? We didn’t ask the question, because you never asked Brian Clough why. He took them away and then gave them back to us in pre-season. A weird thing. He never told us why.
The trophy parade around Nottingham will live long in the memory.
Birtles: We started at Holme Pierrepont, the watersports centre where the bus was, and Larry Lloyd and a couple of others were thinking, “Nobody is going to come out and see us.” We were panicking a little bit because we thought nobody would come and see us and we were all on this bus looking like lemons going through Nottingham and there’d be a sparse crowd. But all of a sudden, as we started going through the Meadows, through the Embankment, it started to mount and mount. There were more and more people, and once we got to the square, it was just staggering. There were people as far back as you could see. You think, “Crikey, we’ve achieved something here.” People used to say when you’re on holiday, “Where are you from?” “Oh, I’m from Nottingham.” “Oh, Robin Hood.” But once we’d won that trophy, you went away: “Oh, Brian Clough, Nottingham Forest.” It’s great to hear those sorts of things when you’ve achieved that. I’m from a council estate in Nottingham. I was a floor layer, I was working in freezing cold conditions in the winter, building sites with no heat and everything. Then to suddenly play for your hometown team and within five years, win two European Cups, a League Cup, represent your country, win the European Young Player of the Year... That was how quickly it happened, how lucky I feel, how humble I feel because of it happening. It’s just crazy.
Robertson: It’s extraordinary. I think it is never going to be beaten. Starting in May 1977 we were in the second division and by May 1979 we are the European champions. It’s a very hard thing to accomplish and I think it’s a one-off. It was a sensation for a club like us. I believe we’re still the smallest city to ever win it. The best word I can say is ’sensational’.
Did you know that there is a team which has won more European Cups than domestic leagues? Inconceivable as it sounds, Nottingham Forest have been European champions twice and kings of England only once. A highly motivated group, led by an eccentric football purist, pulled off perhaps the greatest surprise in the history of the European Cup – and put the East Midlands city at the centre of the football universe.
Forest had been on the up since outspoken manager Brian Clough arrived in January 1975. Bruised by his short, unhappy experience in charge of Leeds United earlier that season, the mouthy maverick was determined to prove he wasn’t past it. Cloughie had won the league in charge of Derby County in 1972, but controversy in the European Cup semi-final loss at Juventus a year later left him with unfinished business in UEFA’s top tournament. In his first campaign with Forest, he guided a decidedly average squad to a ninth-place finish in the second division. Then, when Cloughie hired his old Derby right-hand man Peter Taylor, Forest began to fire.
The combination of Clough and Taylor grew unbeatable. First, they won promotion to the first division, before lifting the league title a year later. They triumphed with possession-based, on-the-deck football, fastidiously free of cynical foul play or divas in the dressing room (Clough aside).
“If you move the ball quickly, you can catch the opposition out,” explains John McGovern, Forest captain under Clough. “You pass the ball to one of your team-mates quickly and accurately at the right time. He receives the ball, controls it and then he can do something with it before he passes it onto another of his team-mates. It’s just the easiest way, the quickest way and the most effective way to play football.”
The simplicity of Clough’s approach not only won Forest the league in 1978, but that utterly unexpected achievement also earned them entry into the European Champion Clubs’ Cup. Little was expected from the Tricky Trees, but it wasn’t just their quirky name and shiny shirts (a rarity back then) that made them special.
With the exception of million-pound-man Trevor Francis, there were few stars in the sides that won the European Cup in 1979 and then again in 1980. They numbered mostly dependable journeymen or promising misfits, transformed into household names by Clough and Taylor. Old Big ‘Ead, as Clough was known, delighted the press with his philosophy, bluntness and idiosyncrasies. Taylor, who avoided the limelight, was the master of spotting players with potential. Plus, crucially, he was the only person who could tell Clough to get a grip or wind his neck in.
Nottingham is the smallest city to produce a European Cup-winning side, and the club with football’s most autobiographical badge are still famous across the globe. There is a posh cocktail bar in central Milan named after them. Amusingly, their two-year Euro-dominance initially took them a mere 110 miles ‘up the road’ to Anfield but culminated in a second consecutive victory in the final against Hamburg at the Santiago Bernabéu in May 1980.
Here, three of the players from that first European Cup-winning team – captain John McGovern, striker Garry Birtles and winger John Robertson – tell us about that heady first season in the competition.
McGovern had started his career under Clough at fourth division Hartlepool United, and the selfless, hard-working central midfielder had followed his manager to Derby then Leeds before answering his call once again at Forest in February 1975. Robertson was already a fixture at the City Ground when Clough arrived and his direct running and pinpoint crossing from the left wing made him a mainstay of the side for an incredible 243 consecutive games between December 1976 and December 1980.
Birtles’ story was perhaps the most extraordinary. The Nottingham lad was working as a builder when he was signed by Clough from local non-league side Long Eaton United aged 20 in 1976. He scored his first Forest goal in their first game in the European Cup, a 2-0 first-round win against holders Liverpool, and finished the season with six goals in the competition, scoring in every round against AEK Athens, Grasshoppers and FC Köln as Forest blazed a trail through Europe the likes of which had never been seen before and will likely never be seen again.
Forest’s first European test could not have been more difficult.
Garry Birtles: Nobody gave us a chance. We were looking forward to maybe an Italian game, a French game, a Spanish game. We drew Liverpool, the holders.
John Robertson: Liverpool were the European champions at the time. I remember being on holiday with Tony Woodcock in the Caribbean and making a phone call to find out who we’d got. The person on the other end told me it was Liverpool and I thought, “You’re joking, aren’t you? God, we don’t even get the chance to get abroad!” But we’d played them three times the previous season and hadn’t been beaten, so they wouldn’t have been looking forward to it.
John McGovern: Disappointment. We were listening to the draw and saying, “I want to go to Spain; no, I want to go to Germany.” And then it’s Liverpool; we’re not even going out of the country. This is supposed to be called the European Cup and we’ve got Liverpool.
Forest won the first leg 2-0 at the City Ground. Birtles opened the scoring on 27 minutes then full-back Colin Barrett added a second three minutes from time.
McGovern: Brian Clough never spoke about the opposition; it was about how we do, what we do. That will make the opposition worry about us. Clough said, “Listen, you know what they’ll be saying in their dressing room: ‘Not them again’,” so it acted in our favour. We’d actually got the better of Liverpool by pipping them to the league championship the year before and also beating them in the League Cup over two games. We went into those matches quite confident; not cocky, but confident that we’d beaten them the year before.
Birtles: I think I got six in that particular campaign. It was incredible. Clough had said: “Get in the box, get in the box” before the game. So that was it, I got in the box. [For the second goal] Phil Thompson came across and half-tackled. I just turned and didn’t look up and put it into an area where I thought somebody might be. There was a great header from Tony Woodcock. Colin Barrett was, for some reason, in the penalty box. I don’t think Mr Clough and Mr Taylor were impressed to start off with, but they were when it finally went in the back of the net.
A goalless draw at Anfield in the second leg was enough to advance.
Robertson: It was brilliant, brilliant, brilliant to be part of, a great experience; you’ve knocked out the champions in the first round. I remember [Liverpool manager] Bob Paisley saying that he thought we could win it and I couldn’t believe that. “He thinks we can win the European Cup?” Because the European Cup, for me, was about Puskás and Di Stéfano from the Real Madrid v Eintracht Frankfurt game in 1960. I never thought you could go and play in the same competition as them.
Birtles: The hardest job was probably out of the way at that particular point. Still, nobody expected us to go anywhere. We were playing the best in Europe then. They were the respective winners from every country. It was just a roller-coaster ride. Being a local boy, all your friends get involved, you go down the pub and it’s the talk of the town. It was just incredible. The whole journey was magnificent.
Next up, AEK Athens as Forest hit their stride.
Robertson: We won 2-1 over there and 5-1 in the second game. We were awesome in those two games and played really well and a 7-2 aggregate would explain it.
Birtles: Ferenc Puskás was the manager of AEK Athens then. I remember scoring the [second] goal [in Athens]. Frank Clark very rarely got across the halfway line and he panicked a little bit and gave it to me. I side-stepped the defender and put it in. Then we came back here and I scored [twice] in the second leg as well.
A 4-1 win at home to Zürich side Grasshoppers set Forest up to reach the semi-finals 5-1 on aggregate. There they met German champions FC Köln and the first leg at the City Ground produced one of the great European Cup ties. On a swamp of a pitch, Köln jumped to an early 2-0 lead; Forest hit back with goals from Birtles, Ian Bowyer and Robertson, before a late leveller from Japanese substitute Yasuhiko Okudera turned the tie back in the German side’s favour.
McGovern: Our normal play was that after we kicked off, we rushed the opposition; we hustled and we didn’t give them time. What we found out was that Köln were a very good counterattacking side. When we went 2-0 down a lot of people might have written us off, but there was always that spirit and belief in the camp that if we get a goal back, we can get back into the match.
Birtles: It was a horrible pitch, it was a mud bath. They did go 2-0 up, they could have gone 3-0 up, they missed a decent chance. Then I got the header just to get us back into it. Then we got back in front somehow. John Robertson scored with a diving header. It was impossible to think that John Robertson could score with a diving header. He couldn’t head the ball to save his life. But he was there and he said: “I knew where you were going to put it in, I knew what you were going to do.” Once we got the momentum going, we looked comfortable.
McGovern: We got it back to 3-2 and then, inexplicably, Peter Shilton, who’s usually immaculate in goal, actually let one in.
Birtles: I think it was to do with the mud. I think it shot off the surface and deceived him.
Robertson: It was a bit of a blow, but, at the end of the day, you’ve got to forgive him for all the points he did save us and all the times he got us through. He was a world-class goalkeeper. In my eyes, probably the best there’s been; we forgave him for that one.
Ian Bowyer got the all-important away goal in Köln, midway through the second half.
McGovern: So we then had to go to Germany in the second leg and win in Cologne. But again, there was no real fear, it wasn’t as if we were a goal down. We knew that with the ability we had and the belief we had in each other, we’d get a goal and get back into the game, so we managed to pull that one off.
Robertson: We always thought we were capable of going over to Germany and winning. It was a really difficult game. We knew that once we had something to hang on to, we always felt we had a chance. Once we got the goal, we defended brilliantly.
Birtles: Everybody said: “You’ve got no chance away from home.” Apart from Peter Taylor who said: “If you’re writing us off, think again.” Those words always stick in your mind because we were good in that second leg over there. Shilton was the best goalkeeper in the world, without a doubt. He was fantastic. He and the defence on that particular night in Cologne were magnificent. Larry Lloyd kicked their centre-forward, Dieter Müller, and he went off injured after 15 minutes I think, so that was one threat gone. There was a sign when we walked in about selling tickets for the final afterwards. Somebody translated it for us and that gave us a little bit of a lift. We thought: “Right, OK then. You think you’ve got us, but think again.”
Two months earlier Brian Clough had shocked the British football by signing Trevor Francis from Birmingham City for a record £1m. The striker had been ineligible to play in the European Cup up to this point, but would make his debut in the final.
Birtles: There was panic. Especially from the strikers, me and Tony Woodcock, because Trevor’s a fantastic player. He’d started his career young and he was the boy wonder. His levels went up and up and we just worried if our position was under threat. Luckily, at that point, it wasn’t. Trevor came in and played on the right in that final and, of course, the rest is history. He scored the goal and won the cup for us. I remember when he first came, he was told to make the tea for all the lads. Trevor was great in the dressing room. He wasn’t, “Right, I’m the first £1 million man.” He just mingled in with the rest of us, got on with it and enjoyed every minute.
McGovern: An outstanding sum of money in those days, but when you go and score the winning goal in the final, nobody discusses: “Well, he cost a million pounds, do you think he was really worth that?” That’s taken care of in one blow.
Famed for his unique man-management style, Clough knew how to get the best out of his players, including calming a nervous Birtles ahead of the final against Malmö in Munich.
Birtles: I was the second-youngest player. I’m two days older than Viv Anderson. I was as nervous as anything. We were at the hotel and the gaffer said: “Right, we’re meeting in the garden of the hotel,” before the bus went. So we were sitting out there and he came down and he could see I was nervous. Before a game, I had this thing where I didn’t shave. I didn’t have a beard because he wouldn’t let me grow a beard, but it was stubble. I wasn’t going to shave it until after the game. He said: “Gaz, what’s that on your chin?” I said: “I always do it gaffer, it’s superstition.” He said: “Get upstairs, get it shaved off now.” I said: “I can’t, all my stuff is on the coach. I packed it all away.” He said: “Right, has anybody got any aftershave for Gaz? I’ve got a razor up in my room.” Chris Woods, the reserve goalkeeper – because goalkeepers carry those little bags round with them – had aftershave. So I had to go up to the gaffer’s room, borrow his razor and shave it all off. I had pieces of tissue on me because I was so nervous and I was trying to shave. Looking back, I wondered why he’d done that, but he’s a great man-manager. He didn’t want me starting that game in that state. It took my mind off it. Then we were on the coach. The next minute we were in the stadium and in the build-up to it, we were in the moment. I remember that particular time in that garden like it was yesterday and thankfully he sorted me out.
Forest struggled to break down Bob Houghton’s Malmö side until Robertson crossed for Francis to head in the only goal shortly before half-time.
McGovern: Heads or tails, that was my responsibility as captain. Try and win the toss because you’d take that much stick from the players: “You’ve lost again, you’ve lost the toss again.” There was no more responsibility on me as captain going into that match than there was on any of the other players. Go out and show what you can do and try and please the supporters that have spent all of the money to come over here to watch you.
Birtles: Some of the stories my pals tell me: I got them tickets and they got there. They begged, stole and borrowed to get to the final. Nottingham was buzzing, it was crazy. Nothing like that had ever happened in a sporting sense, I suppose. You try to buy in to that. But the final was not entertaining for the fans. They were a very big, physical side, they just put ten men behind the ball and said, “Right, break us down.”
McGovern: We weren’t as fluent as we had been, although you have to give Malmö some credit for that. But then eventually John Robertson produces yet another piece of magic and lays on the perfect cross for Trevor Francis to score. I would say we were one of the hardest teams to get back at once we had gone a goal up. We didn’t want to give anything away, we were a mean side when it came to keeping the opposition out because the work rate of the players to help each other was phenomenal.
Birtles: We did struggle to break them down. I should’ve scored early on. I was one-on-one with their defender, the keeper came out, I lifted it over him and it landed on the roof of the net. I thought, “It’s going to be one of those days.” I’d scored in every other game in the build-up, but then the genius that is John Robertson got the ball out wide, put a wonderful cross in, which he did on many occasions. If you look across the box there are four of us attacking: one at the near post, another one in the middle, and I was the third one in line and I was going to go for it knowing that I probably couldn’t have got it on target. All of a sudden, in the corner of my eye, I saw this red flash and, obviously, it was Trevor and he scored the goal. It was a great header. He had to really twist himself round and get it in the roof of the net. Let the celebrations begin.
Robertson: The goal! The goal! I remember having to stretch for the ball Ian Bowyer sent to me. I thought I was going to let it run out, but I managed to get a hold of it. Whenever I got the ball, I was always doubled up on, but this was my first chance to get at them. I got the cross in and Trevor made up a lot of ground and scored. It’s amazing, we had about four or five players in the box at that time. I think that’s as good a compliment to me as anything, the fact that they expected it to come in. I remember peeking to see where it went but Trev made up a lot of ground and it was brilliant when it went in the net.
McGovern: Once we were 1-0 up, it was just a case of, “Can we get another one?” But the feeling generally, when we went into the dressing room was that we were a little bit disappointed because we wanted to put on a show for the supporters. We wanted to go out and absolutely bury Malmö. We wanted to beat them four or five to nil. You come off and it’s 1-0, you just think, “We’d just wish we had done a bit more for the supporters.”
Birtles: They didn’t really provide much of a threat. We should’ve wrapped it up in the second half, [but] didn’t. It doesn’t matter: 1-0 to Nottingham Forest, champions of Europe, and what it meant to the city of Nottingham after that was unreal.
McGovern: If you had come into the dressing room after the match, it was very quiet. Clough was nonchalant as well. “This was it, job done. OK, let’s go off and quietly celebrate with our own family and ourselves.” My dad had died when I was a youngster, he never ever saw me play football and strangely enough, just a vision of my dad came straight into my mind when I was being presented with the cup. People said that I wasn’t really smiling but it was a reflection of wishing that my dad had been there. Like most sons, I loved my dad when he was around, although my mum enjoyed the glory. I just wished my dad had been there. I don’t know why the thoughts came into my mind. But it did.
Birtles: Clough took our medals off us in the dressing room after. We thought he was winding us up. We won the European Cup, sat down with our winners’ medals and he said, “I want all your medals.” Why? We didn’t ask the question, because you never asked Brian Clough why. He took them away and then gave them back to us in pre-season. A weird thing. He never told us why.
The trophy parade around Nottingham will live long in the memory.
Birtles: We started at Holme Pierrepont, the watersports centre where the bus was, and Larry Lloyd and a couple of others were thinking, “Nobody is going to come out and see us.” We were panicking a little bit because we thought nobody would come and see us and we were all on this bus looking like lemons going through Nottingham and there’d be a sparse crowd. But all of a sudden, as we started going through the Meadows, through the Embankment, it started to mount and mount. There were more and more people, and once we got to the square, it was just staggering. There were people as far back as you could see. You think, “Crikey, we’ve achieved something here.” People used to say when you’re on holiday, “Where are you from?” “Oh, I’m from Nottingham.” “Oh, Robin Hood.” But once we’d won that trophy, you went away: “Oh, Brian Clough, Nottingham Forest.” It’s great to hear those sorts of things when you’ve achieved that. I’m from a council estate in Nottingham. I was a floor layer, I was working in freezing cold conditions in the winter, building sites with no heat and everything. Then to suddenly play for your hometown team and within five years, win two European Cups, a League Cup, represent your country, win the European Young Player of the Year... That was how quickly it happened, how lucky I feel, how humble I feel because of it happening. It’s just crazy.
Robertson: It’s extraordinary. I think it is never going to be beaten. Starting in May 1977 we were in the second division and by May 1979 we are the European champions. It’s a very hard thing to accomplish and I think it’s a one-off. It was a sensation for a club like us. I believe we’re still the smallest city to ever win it. The best word I can say is ’sensational’.
