WHAT A STOREY!
Legendary striker offers inspiration to Forest with memories of ‘greatest’ goal
says Storey-Moore, as he recalls the team and esteemed colleagues such as Henry Newton, Frank Wignall, John Barnwell and Joe Baker.
Three months after the wonder goal against Arsenal and StoreyMoore was off to Manchester United following a tangled transfer which would have caused brains to explode on Sky Sports News had they been live on air in 1972.
It was a Friday in March when Storey-Moore was summoned to the manager’s office and Matt Gillies invited him to talk to United. A record fee of £200,000 had been agreed and the transfer deadline was looming.
He met Unit e d boss Frank O’Farrell in a hotel but when he failed to agree terms Gillies picked up the phone, dialled Brian Clough’s number at Derby and passed the receiver to his player.
‘I said hello Brian and told him what had happened,’ recalled Storey-Moore, rolling out a Cloughie impression which is famed in the Nottingham area. ‘He said: “We’ll be there in half-an-hour”.
‘Everyone from Forest, the manager, his assistant, the secretary, all there because they thought I was going to sign, they all disappeared. It was like someone was coming from outer-space. I couldn’t believe it. I don’t know if it was fear or what. I was left on my own in this hotel room with Clough and Peter Taylor on the way.
‘ Well, they burst in, coats off. “Sign here, we want you to come to Derby”. We agreed terms and I actually signed the forms. I admit to that.
‘Clough told Taylor to take me to the hotel where the team were staying and said: “I’ll go and sort the b******* out at the City Ground”. Four or five hours later, he came back: “All sorted, you’re a Derby County player”. I had a glass of champagne with the players and they got Archie Gemmill out of bed, which he wasn’t very happy about. Next day, all hell let loose.’
Clough paraded his new recruit on the Baseball Ground pitch before Derby played Wolverhampton Wanderers but Forest chairman Tony Wood hit the roof.
‘I walked out to a tremendous ovation,’ said Storey-Moore. ‘I didn’t know but they were trying to bluff it and the chairman phoned my wife and said there was no way Forest would allow me to go to Derby.’
By Monday, Sir Matt Busby was in Nottingham and the move to Manchester United was complete.
‘Cloughie never spoke to me for years,’ said Storey- Moore. ‘ He wasn’t happy. The next time I spoke to him, Paul Hart was the manager and we were at a dinner at the ground and Clough was speaking.
‘We were in a private room having a few drinks with the old players when he walked i n. I thought: “Oh bloody hell”.
‘He just ignored me, snubbed me really. He was talking to Ian Bowyer, Liam O’Kane and John Robertson and then he looked at me and said: “Oh, it’s you. They tell me you’re not such as big a s***house as you used to be”.’
Storey-Moore laughs. ‘That was Cloughie wasn’t it? It wasn’t even my fault. That’s the thing. He told me they’d signed the forms, which they hadn’t. He should’ve understood that, which he didn’t.’
The move to Old Trafford started well enough with a flurry of goals, but there would be only 40 appearances for United before injury ended his playing career at 28.
Storey-Moore snapped ankle ligaments in 1970, days after his England debut against Holland.
His hopes of making the World Cup squad were shattered and, four years later, the same injury struck the same ankle when contesting a ball with David Sadler on United’s shale training pitch.
‘I always think I’m something of a nearly man,’ says Storey-Moore. ‘One cap, nearly won the League, nearly won the Cup. I scored a lot of goals but I’d have liked to have won something.’
But there are no shortage of fond memories and hilarious stories from time spent with icons such as George Best and Jim Baxter.
Storey- Moore was player- manager of Burton Albion and manager of Shepshed Charterhouse before leaving football to become a bookmaker. He coached part-time at Forest’s academy and became the club’s chief scout and held the same role at Aston Villa for four years.
At 72, he watches most of his football at Burton and each week he meets up with former team-mates including John Robertson and John O’Hare and they reminisce about how much harder defenders would kick the wingers in the old days.
‘I think there was more togetherness, then,’ says Storey-Moore. ‘But it would be lovely, just for one game, to see what it’s like to play now. It must be great.’