Saturdays not quite the same without roar of the crowd
WHAT’S IT LIKE TO LIVE NEAR THE CITY GROUND? EERILY QUIET AT THE MOMENT
FOR lifelong Nottingham Forest fan Des Oldham, it’s important to soak up the matchday atmosphere in and around the City Ground, nipping out early to buy a programme and leaving his home – just a short walk from the stadium – five minutes before kick-off.
The Reds last played in front of spectators in a miserable 3-0 home defeat to Millwall in early March.
The coronavirus pandemic brought a temporary halt to the previous Championship campaign and football resumed in June, but behind closed doors for safety reasons.
Football without fans still seems very strange for Mr Oldham, who lives in a flat roughly seven doors down from the ground, in Colwick Road.
He said: “I remember one day they were playing a warm-up game where it wasn’t well-advertised, it wasn’t sort of known.
“I’d been out for a walk along the river, I’d come back and I always use a little path that runs down the back of the Brian Clough Stand, down the canal there.
“I could hear it was almost like if you lived close to a Sunday morning match - I could hear a whistle and a bit of shouting. “I couldn’t hear it properly but I was thinking ‘what’s that’ and then, all of a sudden, it dawned on me that something must be going on inside.
“The feeling then is a bit bizarre because you’re almost like ‘well I don’t know what’s going on.’”
“I guess it just feels so far away now, doesn’t it?”
Mr Oldham, 40, a season card holder in the upper tier of the Bridgford Stand, who works for the NHS, went on: “It’s really hard to comprehend. It is eerily quiet because you know it’s happening, that’s the strangest thing and the cones are out.”
Mr Oldham, who owns a community interest company called DO Running, says the return of supporters will be an “emotional” occasion - and he explains why he and partner Kay Knowles chose to move so close to the ground.
“It was a little bit too soon really for us to probably consider but this place came up and, when it came up, obviously I was really, really interested because of where it was,” he says.
“I do the running club, I’ve been going to football for that long and, with Forest being at the end of the road, and being centred amongst everything I was doing, it was absolutely perfect. We just went for it and got it. It was something I didn’t want to let pass by.
“It takes me about three minutes to get from my sofa to my seat. I leave at 2.55pm, I walk down to the end of the road, go into the turnstile, up the stairs and I’m in my seat. Bizarrely, the later I leave it the quicker it is.”
He added: “Some people said to me when I was moving in, ‘I couldn’t think of anything worse - all that traffic, all those people, the away fans up and down.’ “But for me I just like to watch it build up. I nip out and get a programme early and then leave it at home so I don’t have to take it around with me. And all those little things just make a massive difference. I can sit, watch Soccer
Saturday, read my programme and build myself up to the match and listen to Radio Nottingham and all those kind of things. It’s just amazing to be honest - it just adds so much to my personal experience.”
Other Reds supporters also enjoy the location. Season card holder Albert Blagden, 84, who has lived in Colwick Road for 21 years, said: “It’s brilliant. I just walk up here, through the car park and then I am there.
“My side is at the other end of the Clough stand.”
But the former HGV driver is quick to point out there are other perks to living in West Bridgford.
“It’s not far to the shops, it’s near the Trent if you want to go and walk down the side of the Trent in the summer - or in fact any time.”
Some students live in the surrounding streets, including 20-year-old Jacob Burt, of Hawksworth Road, who is in the second year of studying philosophy and linguists at Nottingham Trent University.
Jacob, originally from Coventry, said: “We are all on the Clifton campus in this house. We are sort of in between the city and campus, so it’s sort of like the same distance to both.
“We thought living so close to the football ground it wouldn’t be a massive problem, and it hasn’t been so far - we haven’t noticed anything major because of it.
“There is a house down the road that we’re friends with, they’re all into football. I think they’ll be going to a couple of games - I suppose it’s probably an attraction for them but not really for us.”
I walk down to the end of the road, go into the turnstile, up the stairs and I’m in my seat. Des Oldham