Almanac Soccer – A Night at Meadow Lane: Notts County v Bristol Rovers

 

 

If you’re a football follower in the City of Nottingham things are getting serious. It’s time for everyone to buckle up their big boy trousers.

On May 4th, the May Day Monday bank holiday, Nottingham Forest travelled to Chelsea and won 3-1 in an authoritative performance. That puts Forest in a more comfortable position with three home and away games remaining. They’re 16th in the Premier League but now seem a rung above the looming death struggle to avoid relegation between the two big London clubs just below them on the ladder. West Ham were beaten 3-0 on Saturday at Brentford. Spurs won 2-0 at Aston Villa on Sunday but have a tough run home.

Last Thursday night at Forest’s City Ground the ‘Tricky Trees’, as they are sometimes known, bettered Villa 1-0 in the first leg of their semi-final of the Europa League. Their goal was a penalty kick cooly converted by the admirable New Zealand centre forward Chris Woods. The return leg for one-time European specialists Forest is at Villa Park this coming Thursday night. If they make it through, Forest – who are occasionally called ‘The Garibaldi’ due to a connection with the Italian general who inspired their choice of ‘redshirts’ – will play an un-intimidating club, either Portugal’s Braga or Germany’s Freiburg, for the Europa trophy in Istanbul on 20 May.

The winner of the Europa competition gets to play in the 2026-27 European Champions League so there’s a bizarre scenario that might still unfold: next year a relegated Forest could play simultaneously in Europe’s top tier and England’s second tier. Imagine the challenge of compiling a playing list capable of competing successfully in those two competitions – the one requiring finesse and the other grunt.

The undulating fortunes of the East Midlands city’s other team – Notts County – are too often overlooked. Although mired in the fourth tier of England’s football league they’re having a great year, vying for promotion. County lay claim to being the world’s oldest continuously operating professional sporting club, having been founded in 1862 and then electing a Committee at a meeting in 1864 at the George Hotel in Nottingham’s lace district. I’ve been staying at the George (now the Mercure) this week. At one of its early meetings County adopted black and white vertical stripes and the moniker the Magpies, making them the ORIGINAL MAGPIES ahead of unimaginative Johnny-come-lately imitator rip-off merchants such as Port Adelaide (1870), Newcastle F.C. (1881), Juventus (1901) … and Collingwood.

Last Saturday afternoon County hosted a contest at their Meadow Lane ground, where they’ve been based since 1910, in the concluding round of the League 2 fixture. They were matched up with mid-table Bristol Rovers, who play in blue and white quarters. Naturally, I decided to go along.

 

 

I strolled from the city centre down the London Road. but must admit I was feeling a little uneasy. I’d just been at the National Justice Museum in the old Shire Hall where they re-enact court cases from the early nineteenth century and pluck people out from the audience to role-play. I’d been selected to stand in the dock as the accused villain, while my wife played the schoolteacher witness who’d heard a disturbing noise in her backyard. I’m sad to say I was convicted of murder, based on my own wife’s evidence, and sentenced to be hung by the neck until dead on the Shire Hall’s front steps. Not a great way to start the day.

I made a left turn across a small stone bridge onto Cattle Market Road then turned right into Meadow Lane, where I picked up my ticket at the collection booth. Ticket in hand I trundled the short distance down to the river to take in the expanse of Forest’s empty-today City Ground. The two arenas, County’s and Forest’s are the most adjacent stadia in England. They’re only 250 metres apart, though in two different municipalities. They’re separated by the River Trent and the success Forest have enjoyed over the past five decades.

The Meadow Lane stadium probably has the largest capacity in League 2 – 17,000 – and it was packed to the rafters. That’s a large dollop of passion in a confined space. (The next biggest gate this day in League 2 was Swindon’s 13,000; attendance at all other games was well under 10,000.) To be honest the Meadow Lane ground doesn’t so much need a renovation or a facelift as a demolition, but it’s in a fine location.

 

 

My seat was in the Sirrell stand on the sideline level with the edge of the penalty box, about 20 rows up. I had an excellent view of the grandstand at the eastern end of the Meadow Lane ground – their Kop. It’s the rowdy end. County like to kick to the Kop in the second half. At the western end there is the less dauntingly named Haydn Green Family Stand. Proceedings kicked off with an angry mood around the ground because Rovers won the toss and elected to have County kick to the Kop in the first half. Poor sportsmanship.

I soon discovered that the County supporters’ regular chant is a familiar refrain: ‘Come on Ye Pies’. Getting swept up in the mood of the place, I spontaneously began barracking for the Magpies. I started worrying about myself. Somehow I had ended up supporting the black and white on a Saturday afternoon, on a weekend when the Hawks and Collingwood had already had a draw. I’ll check in for therapy when I get back to Melbourne.

County went into this game fifth on the League 2 ladder but still with a chance of claiming third place and the last of the three automatic promotion spots. They needed to win and have other results involving the clubs just above them, Cambridge and Salford, fall their way. As is now customary in England, all the final round ties were to be played simultaneously.

The game at Meadow Lane began with County playing a 4-1-3-2 formation and they quickly gained ascendancy. Their deep-lying central midfielder Norburn was their playmaker. He was their hub and controlled the tempo of the game throughout the first half. Their primary attacking channel was down the left via left-footers Luker and Grant and those two created regular forays on goal. Right-side midfielder Tsaroulla was strong in the contest and threaded some nice passes and he was rewarded when he scored the first goal, driving in a rebound after a shot was parried by the Rovers’ keeper Young. There was plenty of goal mouth action in the first half and lots of defensive scrambling. Only one Bristol player caught my eye as a superior player in that half – right back Senior.

The second half was a strange one. In its opening minutes County got caught out on turnovers a few times, with their midfielders running forward of the ball, leaving their defence exposed to fast counter-attacks. Fourteen minutes into the second half this culminated in an attack down the left, a cross and a tap in by Harrison. The County manager responded with a cluster of substitutions where he pulled off the three players I thought had been their best in the first half – Norburn, Luker and Grant. He changed the formation, shifting to 3-2-3-2, deploying two defensive midfielders where previously there had been one in Norburn.

I didn’t like this shift at all. County lost their attacking spark and the Rovers surged. The County manager must have judged that some of his players didn’t have enough tank to run out the game. Notts County began playing without pace on the ball and it took them twenty minutes to develop an adjusted pattern of play that was effective. This left too little time at the end of the game to press hard for a winner. This nearly occurred, with five minutes left, after a nice cross from the right led to a tap in, but a player was judged narrowly offside. Alas, County walked away with a draw and Cambridge snared third place on the ladder. Both the games involving Cambridge and Salford were goalless draws.

Notts County now face a two-leg knockout promotion battle, starting away against Chesterfield this coming Sunday. If they prevail they will face either Salford or Grimsby in a winner-take-all playoff at Wembley on 25 May, a bank holiday Monday, potentially a massive day for the club.

Looking back on the game there were some impressive individual contributions in the second half. For County, one-out striker Iorpenda was an ever-present threat and centre-back McDonald was solid. A flashy substitute Bristol brought on at half time, Akhamrich, a left-footer playing as a right winger – tall and caressing the ball in the manner of ex-Spurs kingpin Chris Waddle – was creative and dangerous throughout the half.

The people who support Notts County are salt of the earth types. The lyrics to their club song are simple but superb. In just eight words they encapsulate the humble-ness, low expectations and pessimism that struck me as the essence of the County culture. To the tune of ‘On top of old smokie’ they sing four times: ‘I had a wheelbarrow, the wheel fell off’.

They sang this before the game. They sang it after their goal was scored. And they sang it in the final minutes as their chance of automatic promotion drifted away.

Up against some sneering late in-the-game chanting from Bristol Rovers’ travelling supporters, the County Kop responded with ‘Que sera sera. Whatever will be. Will be. We’re going to Wembley. Que sera sera.’ They’re looking forward, not back at this day’s missed chance.

As for the Meadow Lane ground, I left reflecting on the opportunity that must exist for a single stadium development for the city of Nottingham – a place where Forest and County could play on alternate weekends, with a big stadium naming rights sponsor. This kind of rational solution always gets complicated by private ownership of franchises and disproportionate fortunes of the two teams involved. But the example of the San Siro in Milan, with Inter and A.C. as co-tenants shows what can be achieved. And Everton has demonstrated how a great new facility can whisk a historic club into the twenty-first century. The solution in Milan hinged on stadium ownership by the municipality, coupled with sensible lease arrangements. The City of Nottingham is broke but I understand there is underlying council control of Forest’s stadium. Have the municipality buy back the freehold of Meadow Lane from its private owner, detonate some dynamite, locate both clubs to a new stadium developed at Meadow Lane on long term leases and sell off the City Ground to raise funds. That could work!

Result: Notts County 1, Bristol Rovers 1

Best for Notts County: Tsaroulla, McDonald, Norburn, Luker, Grant, Iorpenda

Best for Bristol Rovers: Senior, Akhamrich

 

 

To read more by Dave Goodwin click here.

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