Eric Paylor: Boro's bogey grounds are like buses - you wait for ages then three come along at once

Boro's bogey grounds are like buses – you wait for ages, and then three come along at once.

Hot on the heels of St Andrew’s and Hillsborough, Boro must prepare to try to smash another traditional hoodoo at Nottingham Forest’s City Ground on Saturday.

Are we concerned that Boro have won just once at Forest in the last 42 years?

A little bit, of course – but the performance has got to be better than the disappointing effort at Hillsborough.

In any case, thoughts of the City Ground won’t create any negatives for the current Boro squad.

In fact George Friend and Grant Leadbitter will fondly recall two consecutive battling draws at Forest, which weren’t bad results at the time.

So, for logical reasons, there’ll be no talk in the Boro dressing room of bogey grounds this week.

And, a good result on Saturday will ensure that the City Ground will hold no future fears, just like the old days.

There was a time when Boro used to win regularly in West Bridgford, especially in Brian Clough’s time. He scored a hat- trick at the City Ground in 1956.

Brian Clough

So, how fitting, that one the suggestions for a potential name for a proposed new stadium in Nottingham was the Brian Clough Stadium.

Nottingham was one of the English cities seeking to be involved in the 2018 World Cup. Plans were drawn up to replace the City Ground with a brand spanking new stadium.

Those plans went on the back-burner when Russia were awarded the World Cup instead, and have since been replaced by plans to rebuild the main stand at the City Ground if Forest are promoted to the Premier League.

I reckon the Brian Clough Stand would do nicely as a name, especially bearing in mind Cloughie’s hat-trick at the stadium.

Not that I would like to see the end of the current main stand at the City Ground.

In an era where most of England’s top clubs have either built new stadia or rebuilt their original ones, the main stand at the City Ground stands as a beacon to an era where football stadia appeared to have souls.

That’s despite the fact that this particular main stand goes back only to the late 1960s.

Forest’s original main stand burned down in 1965 and the current one is less than 50 years old. But it has an atmosphere and a personality of its own, and Forest is one of their grounds that I have always enjoyed visiting.

For the record, Clough’s treble came in November, 1956, when Boro stuffed Forest 4-0 in a Second Division clash.

Arthur Fitzsimons grabbed Boro’s other goal, though maybe we should give some credit to the Boro defence because the clean sheet was their first of the season.

Not that it was hampering their push for promotion. The win at Forest was Boro’s fifth in six games, the sixth game at Swansea having ended in a draw.

The Boro goalie that day was Brian’s erstwhile chum Peter Taylor. This was the time when they first forged their legendary friendship.

Even before Clough broke through into the Boro team, Taylor had declared publicly that Clough was the best centre-forward at the club and a great talent in the making.

There was quite an age difference between the pair, but the young Cloughie used to go around to Taylor’s house on an evening and spend hour after hour discussing football.

It was only natural when Clough started out on the managerial trail, that Taylor should be his choice as No 2.

Taylor had just become a first team regular at Boro himself in 1956, having followed Rolando Ugolini into the No 1 shirt.

Ironically Taylor was born in Nottingham and played for the club as a youth player, before eventually breaking into league football with Coventry City.

PA Wire

27-09-1978 of Nottingham Forest manager Brian Clough (left) and assistant Peter Taylor sitting on the sidelines at Anfield.

There is a much repeated story how Coventry appointed a new manager and coach in 1955 in Jesse Carver and George Raynor, whose first decision was to decide that Taylor was surplus to requirements.

So they sold the keeper to Boro and thus changed the course of British football history, because that is how Taylor and Clough met up.

Bearing in mind that Taylor is a Nottingham lad, maybe the name of Forest’s new main stand should be the Peter Taylor Stand – after all, he kept a clean sheet there in 1956.

Ray Barnard, Dickie Robinson and Derek Stonehouse were other Boro defenders who contributed to the clean sheet, with able support from Ronnie Dicks and Bill Harris.

We have discussed Boro’s best ever player on a few occasions, and Harris is another player that many of Boro’s long serving fans would want to be considered.

In fact some erstwhile supporters have claimed that Harris was the best ball player they ever saw.

Welshman Harris was signed by Boro from Hull City in the summer of 1954 with a view to bolstering a Boro side which was well on its way to experiencing its first relegation in 26 years.

Harris soon proved himself a cultured performer in the Second Division and went on to win six Welsh international caps.

He was arguably the first name on the Boro teamsheet from the mid-1950s to the mid- 1960s and went on to make a mammoth 378 appearances for the club, scoring 72 goals.

Other members of Boro’s big win at the City Ground were inside forward Derek McLean and wingers Ronnie Burbeck and Lindy Delapenha.

Delapenha, who was the first Jamaican to play professional football in England, saw service with the RAF before going on to spend spells with Arsenal and Portsmouth, neither of which was particularly successful from a playing point of view.

It was at Boro that his career finally took off. Lindy became a virtual regular in the side throughout much of the 1950s, being effective in all the attacking roles.

He scored 93 goals in 270 appearances and was Boro’s leading scorer in three seasons, before the Clough scoring phenomenon took hold.

Delapenha had played at the City Ground earlier in the year in May, 1956, when Boro also scored four goals, winning 4-2.

On this occasions Alan Peacock scored two of the goals, while Billy Day added another and Forest also added an own goal.

Unfortunately neither of the big Boro wins at Forest made much difference at the end of the season.

Boro finished 14th in Division Two in 1955-56, though they fared much better in the following campaign when they were sixth – which in the modern era would have been good enough to earn them a place in the play-offs.

Forest’s 4-0 home defeat had no long-term effect because they won promotion that season, finishing second on 54 points – six more than Boro.

Clough scored 38 of Boro’s 83 league goals in 1956-57.

The team conceded 60 goals that season, which was the third stingiest achievement in Division Two.

That compares to Boro’s Premier League relegation season in 2008-9, when they conceded 57 goals and had one of the worst defensive defensive records in the top flight.

How times have changed.

Fortunately times have changed sufficiently for Boro to go to Forest on Saturday believing they are good enough to win the game, despite Forest’s vastly improved form under Dougie Freedman.

This is the same Freedman who scored Forest’s only goal when Boro last won at the City Ground, by a 2-1 margin in 1999.

I don’t wish Freedman any harm, especially as I would want the way clear for Forest to build the Brian Clough/Peter Taylor Stand in the not too distant future.

But hopefully the Forest boss will be on the receiving end again tomorrow.