Starting off this post looking at the fellers between the sticks. Traditionally considered crazy mavericks, I vaguely recall a When Saturday Comes piece many years ago that proposed that ‘keepers were actually a pretty dull bunch, with just the very odd, odd exception.
At Forest, we’ve seen some outstanding keepers, including Shilts, clearly one of the all-time greats. Hardly a scintillating, edgy personality though, even accounting for the little hiccup with Tina. Thoroughly commanding and professional, a remarkable athlete and, sadly, a complete idiot on Twitter with his little-Englander nonsense. The save from Mick Ferguson which clinched the championship at Highfield Road (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr6AelbP_l0) is right up there with the legendary Banks World Cup 70 and there is no doubting the Clough/Taylor line, oft trotted out, that the guy was worth an extra ten points a season. But not interesting and not a character that seems to have captured a great deal of love, considering the achievements. Somehow, never seemed ‘one of us’.
Other than Shilton, probably the greatest Forest keeper was Peter Grummitt. Reckoned to be a better shot stopper than Gordon Banks, but maybe not quite as dominant in the area. In any other era, he’d surely have got a shedload of caps, which chimes with Shilton’s experience of being frustratingly kept out of the England side by Ray Clemence for so long. The Trent End used to sing “We all agree, Grummitt is better than Yashin”,* reference to the global legend Lev, the Dynamo Moscow’s Black Spider and wearer of, to this day, possibly the coolest kit ever. If Wikipedia is to be believed, PG still lives locally, in Newark.
* which continued: “Joe Baker is better than Eusebio and (insert name of team being played here) are in for a thrashin’.”
The great keepers of the seventies all had a similar calm, unruffled, rather dull persona. You couldn’t picture either Shilton or Clemence doing anything particularly wild and Pat Jennings had the demeanour of a gentle old uncle, albeit one with with famously mahoosive hands. Pat always seemed like a cardigan kinda guy. Great keeper though. And then there was Phil Parkes. Another great 70s keeper but not even unique enough to be the only Phil Parkes, great 70s keeper. There was the Wolves one and the QPR/West Ham one!
(A Pat and Two Phils)
Possible exception to this was the mighty Sepp Maier, reputedly completely bonkers, but the actual evidence is hard to find. Aside from what appear to be exceptionally oversized gloves for the time and a predilection for parading the World Cup on his head (and who wouldn’t?), Sepp always seemed spectacularly stable and intense. The best keeper in history? Discuss.
Whilst we’re on great keepers of the past, one of the great bits of viral media in recent years has to be the lovely accidental interview with Liverpool legend Tommy Lawrence, inadvertently stopped in the street to ask his opinions of a forthcoming derby. If you’ve not seen it, it’s truly heartwarming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U_PUbQGA4U
Liverpool provided us with another ‘bonkers’ guy in the shape of Bruce Grobbelaar. Bruce might be the closest we’ve got yet here to a true character. He’d lived though horrors of war as a soldier in the (white) Rhodesian army and had witnessed atrocity on a grand scale, which must have shaped his character. Asked how many people he had killed, he was only able to reply that he had lost count. Famous for (as well as being a terrific if sometimes flaky goalie) his spaghetti legs antics in the 1984 European Cup Final In Rome, Grobbelaar was, not surprisingly, deeply traumatised by Hillsborough and his autobiography makes clear how close he was to the disaster. He was aware of the mounting problem behind him and asked a policewoman to open Gate 13, only to be told she hadn’t got a key. He also saw the face, pressed against the fence, of a girl (who survived) he had given a ticket to. Some life and some stuff to process. BG won damages against the S*n for libel following trials for match-fixing at which no verdict was returned. His award of £85,000 was reduced to £1 (one pound!) on appeal and he was bankrupted by having to pay the paper’s legal costs.
For truly crazy guys between the posts, we need to look a bit further afield, possibly to Ramón Quiroga, the original El Loco, star of Peru’s 1978 World Cup campaign, mostly for an astonishing moment in the match v Poland when he charged into the opposition half to rugby tackle Grzegorz Lato and thus creating an intense but short-lived trend on our school field for haphazardly and randomly jumping on opponents screaming “Elllllll Loco-o-o-o-o-“.
But there’s only one winner and you may never have heard of him or might have forgotten him. One Lutz Pfannenstiel, itinerant Bavarian, who played on six continents, was wrongly jailed for match fixing, lived in an igloo, died (for three minutes) in a match and wasn’t very taken with Frank Clark. Yep, Lutz was briefly at Forest in the mid 90s and his book ‘The Unstoppable Keeper”, a huge best-seller in Germany, is probably the most fun I’ve had reading a football autobiography in years. The Forest bit is only a small part of the story, but describes how ‘welcoming‘ Frank Clark was. Opening line: “You’ve got no chance, son, so make the most of it” along with a disturbing tale of a party hosted by a Forest player in 96 at which he claims 15 players stood round a bath with a naked woman in it, whilst they engaged in a group act of, errr, self-pleasure!
Other great reads on goalkeeping mental health matters include Neville Southall’s Mind Games and the tragic A Life Too Short, which movingly charts the decline and eventual suicide of German international Robert Enke. Both recommended.
All of which brings us to the man who sparked this whole post. The enigma that is Brice Samba. Clearly one of the best keepers Forest have had in a long, long time, Samba is prone to aberrations - some rather spectacular. A magnificent performance is occasionally followed by the kind of crazy moment which threatened to let Leicester back into the FA Cup tie. Last week was Samba in a nutshell. A tremendous performance at Blackburn, at least three great saves to keep us in it against Stoke and all is tickety-boo. But then… the moment of madness which got him sent off. This has divided opinion online. The fiercest critics suggest he should never play for Forest again. Seems harsh to me. They cite that he cost us two points which might prevent us from going up, overlooking that we weren’t winning at the time anyway and a draw already looked like a decent outcome against a good side. They forget how much fans, me included, have loved his shithousery (especially v Derby) and general shenanigans and have effectively encouraged and enabled them. We can’t have it both ways. Perhaps Samba should have been better managed. It’s been coming, so a quiet word might have been a good thing - they have sports psychologists these days don’t they? Then there’s the debate about the ability of stand-in Ethan Horvath. Following a very good performance v Wolves in the League Cup, a bit of a ‘mare at Boro has pretty much marked his card for many. Apparently, 56 appearances for Molde (13 in Europe, including making it into the Europa League team of the week in 2015 for a stunning performance to keep out Ajax), 64 appearances for Bruges, including ten in Europe, being capped at every level from u14 for the USA with 7 full caps isn’t good enough for a Forest reserve. We should have someone better. Wow, you can smell the entitlement! Worth remembering that the mighty Peter Grummitt’s first ever touch of the ball in the first team was to pick the ball out of the net having carelessly neglected to intercept an innocuous back pass. Ethan Horvath won’t be a Peter Grummitt, but to have written him off seems mad in itself. Everything crossed for Bournemouth on Friday night…
In other news, yet another visit to Merseyside for myself yesterday - another meeting of the Hillsborough Survivors Support Alliance, with plenty of positives there, especially around plans to develop and introduce an education package and some exciting fund-raising ideas to enable the HSA to continue to support those survivors most severely affected by PTSD, including a growing number of Forest fans. The therapy isn’t cheap and is dependent on donations. The meeting was attended by both Ian Byrne MP who spoke about the education movement and also the very lovely Maxine Peake, who played Anne Williams so brilliantly and movingly in the recent docu-drama. Maxine talked about the impact playing the role had on her and was genuinely very lovely and down to earth. Both Ian and Maxine showed real empathy, understanding and passion for getting the true narrative around Hillsborough out there and remembered. Here in Nottingham, a small but sustained campaign to engage NFFC with support for those affected and to improve relationships between the two clubs and cities continues to gather pace. It’s not for everyone perhaps and you don’t want to ram things down people’s throats, but for those who care and are affected it is an important development. Thanks to those out there quietly helping with this.
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