Nottingham Forest’s Joe Worrall sets his sights on the Premier
JOE Worrall has been a Nottingham Forest fan all his life, but the closest he’s got to glory was when he was six years old sitting next to Brian Clough.
Worrall saw Forest dive into the third tier of English football, their lowest point, for three years.
He watched them end that sentence and now he is part of the campaign to get the club back in the top flight for the first time in 21 years.
He’s 23 next month. Worrall, and his family, have had to survive all these lean years on videos of the days when Forest were kings, not only of this country, but of Europe.
This season has looked promising.
Worrall has been at the centre of a Forest defence that would have given even Scrooge, a permanent fixture at this time of year, a run for his money.
Four goals conceded in six games. Sitting pretty in fourth and looking for third. There was a consistency to build promotion on. Until last Saturday that is, when they lost 4-0 at home to Sheffield Wednesday.
It was Forest’s biggest home league defeat for eight years and their biggest league defeat anywhere for two years. They were four down by halftime.
“That’s why the manager (Sabri Lamouchi) made no substitutions,” says Worrell. “It was ‘right, you got us into this mess, you get us out of it’.”
Being home that night wasn’t easy. When you are a Forest fan and you play for them, being turned over like that, well, you know what Jeremy Corbyn felt like when the election results came in.
“The games before that, you could argue we got away with some results,” says Worrall, reliving what happened before pledging it will get better.
“We got it hammered to us on Saturday and it’s embarrassing to be on the pitch. You just want to bury your head under the turf.
“Whether I’m a Forest fan or not, if I was playing, I don’t know, for Oxford United, I’d still be livid. Angry.
“I’m thankful a ball didn’t drop between me and one of their players because I’d have probably overstepped the mark.
“That was a 45-minute blip in our season. I want to stress that. It can’t define our season, that one 4-0 thumping, getting our backsides handed to us.
Wilderness
“It can’t get much worse than that this season so we look ahead to the next games and make a fix.”
That was Huddersfield away yesterday, Hull away on Boxing Day, Wigan at home on December 29 and Blackburn at home on New Year’s Day.
New Year is the day Nottingham Forest’s exile from the Premier League ticks over from 20 years to 21.
Worrall was born in 1997, the year Forest were relegated. He was one when they got back as Division One champions in 1998. He was two years and four months when Forest went down again on April 24, 1999.
And they have stayed down.All that silver Clough and Peter Taylor won is tarnished.
Memory keeps giving two European Cups and a League title a polish and it’s something that Worrall wishes he could swop now, the six-yearold him for the 22-year-old and sit next to Brian Clough again.
“My uncle, Terry Henshaw, used to play for Burton Albion when they were playing in the Conference under Nigel
Clough,” says
Worrall, explaining how he and
Clough met.
“I used to sit in the Burton stand, me and my grandad and Brian, and watch the games.
That’s my earliest memories of Forest if you like, sitting next to Brian.
“After growing up, I realise how much I’d like to sit by him now. I was five, or six. I’ve got photos of it.
“He used to share his Werther’s Originals with me. What a bloke. He was older, frailer, but with his big bushy eyebrows.
“Brian was there every game watching his son’s team. He was still quite the character. I didn’t realise then what a legend he was. I wish I could somehow have that time again with him.” Worrall’s first clear memory of watching Forest was the 3-2 home win over Yeovil on the last day of the 2008 season that clinched second place in League One and took them back into the Championship.
Colin Calderwood was the manager who stopped the decline and there have been 12 since, at a rate of nearly one a year.
Worrall is on his fifth since Philippe Montanier, who gave him his debut at Reading in 2016, bit the dust.
“I’ve never known Nottingham Forest as a topflight team,” admits Worrall. “My memories of Forest are League One, getting promoted, struggling in the Championship and not fulfilling the potential that the club’s got.
“I have been reminded many times by my dad, Adrian, and grandad, Frank, how good Forest were.
“I’ve been through the archives, seen the videos, the players we had.
Ambitious
“I’ve seen the pitches, I’ve seen what the players wore on their feet, some of the haircuts. Now it’s faster, high tempo, money coming in from all angles, it’s all in today’s equation.
“I’ve met Des Walker on a couple of occasions. I’ve been reminded of the glory days, but it wasn’t within my lifetime.
“It’s a bit of a shame and I’ve got the opportunity now to act on that, to play and try and get us in the Premier League.
“What would that mean to my dad and grandad? Awesome. My grandad doesn’t get to many of the games now – he struggles with the cold – but my dad, my mum, my brother, his girlfriend, and my girlfriend, they are at every game.
“I know it’s only football but it means a lot to people. Nobody is prouder to wear a Nottingham Forest shirt than me.
“I don’t take it for granted, I think it’s brilliant.”
There are plans to build a new main stand at the City Ground, revamp the whole place, bring it into the 2020s. But they need a Premier League team to fill it.
Forest, if they make it back, will be a bigger club than they were when they won successive European Cups in 1979 and 1980.
It will be a club of today, rich not only in memory, but in money.
“If we got promotion this season and this team played the Forest 1979/1980 European Cup team, they’d probably smash us,” says Worrall, the lad from Hucknall, seven miles from Nottingham.
“In modern times, with the money, yes the club will be bigger than when Forest won the European Cup.
“But what Clough did, it won’t be done again. Peo
ple go on about Leicester City being brilliant winning the Premier League under Claudio Ranieri – that doesn’t even touch the sides.
“I can’t see myself being happier than I have been just pulling on a Forest shirt, coming into training every day.
I suppose there are times when you take it for granted, but when you sit back and speak like we are now, it reminds you of the history of the club and how lucky you are.
“I mentioned Des Walker, the best defender we have ever had.
“I am playing for the same team as him, in the same position he did, putting on the red shirt, the same number he wore.
“Des, those players, have impacted people’s lives. My dad is one of them, Shipstones in the middle of the shirt.
“We have a massive opportunity this season. I want to squeeze as much as I’ve got in me to get this club into the Premier League.”