MATCH OF THE WAHEY
Formermer Rangers star on prospect of mixing it with the best on Saturday night TV
JOE WORRALL can’t wait to watch Match of the Day next season – because instead of marvelling at the cast of talents, he’ll be on it.
Nottingham Forest’s inspirational captain, who spent the 2018-19 season on loan at Rangers, was a two-year-old toddler when the Tricky Trees last graced the Premier League in 1999.
That campaign was an unrelenting bad dream, with Ron Atkinson beginning his final mission as a manager by sitting in the wrong dugout at the City Ground and former Celtic striker Pierre van Hooijdonk embarking on a play-when-you-feel-like-it regime.
But only the most militant lumberjacks would have denied Forest the end of their 23-year exile from the penthouse after a thrilling charge which just fell short of automatic promotion.
And Sunday’s tense play-off final win against Huddersfield in the £180million promotion shootout at Wembley left Worrall – born eight miles up the road in Hucknall – relishing the challenge of taking on the big guns.
Worrall, who has former Aberdeen player Scott McKenna alongside him in the Forest defence, said: “We need to soak it up – Nott ingham Forest are back in the
Premier League and it feels fantastic. We’re not stupid, we know the Championship and the Premier League are worlds apart. “You watch Match of the Day every week and you take a deep breath because the quality is everywhere. “It’s something we’ll have to adapt to but we’ve got a month to enjoy this, come back down of f cloud nine and get to work. “It’s amazing to think we will not just be watching Match of the Day in August – we’ll beb on it. The pundits will be picking over our performance sand it’s fantastic. “We’re not just play-off winners, we’re not just back in the Premier League: We’re
A NEW DON Scott McKenna Nottingham Forest, we’re a massive club, and with the right people around us, the right players, we’ll see how we go. I want to test myself at the next level and some of the other boys do as well.
“They want to see if they can do it at that top level.”
The prospect of Forest having their performances picked apart by Alan Shearer, Danny Murphy and Ian Wright next season seemed as remote as the South Pole when they put only a solitary point on the board in their first seven games.
But Worrall commended boss Steve Cooper’s “kindness” to his players – on the basis they respond like dogs to sympathetic owners – and they responded with verve.
Cooper, an U17 World Cup-winning coach with England, will have his methods tested to the limit next season, but Forest’s per formances against Arsenal, Leicester and Liverpool in the FA Cup suggest they may be equipped to cope.
Worrall said: “I’ve got to hand it to the manager – he deserves every plaudit that comes his way. He’s come in and taken on what looked, from the outside, a misfit team who were low on confidence and couldn’t score.
“We were OK defensively but we could not score for toffee and this year we’ve been a breath of fresh air. Everybody has enjoyed watching us and there’s a lot of belief in what we do.
“It’s been a long time coming and it didn’t just happen overnight. If you look at the form, we’ve been the best team in the league since the manager came in and we’re good value for it.”