Bobby, JFT97 and that glorious day at Wembley
Reflecting on a life of football with Dad after the end of a season without him.
Saturday was an emotional day.
In the most uncharacteristic way imaginable – saving us the customary stress of what the final day would have brought – Nottingham Forest are staying up.
A week today, May 29, marks one year since that day they sealed promotion at Wembley and ended 23 years of misery. The best day at the football we ever had.
With our time together running out and you losing your strength, you made it to Wembley for the day out of all days out. We bounced up and down in joyous celebration together as the Reds sealed promotion in the best possible fashion. The sun beamed down over the famous arch across from us, a sea of booming red noise staying long after the final whistle to mark Forest’s long-awaited return to the top flight. There was no way they weren’t winning that game.
I vividly remember looking at your face as you soaked it all in that day. You didn’t know I was watching you, admiring how much it meant as a tear of joy trickled down your face and ‘Freed From Desire’ played. The video I’ve got capturing those moments will never be beaten.
You loved it. And you would’ve loved the way this season has ended – not short of its chaos and heartache that has been so familiar following Forest for so long – with triumph in the sunshine once more. It just had to be.
It’s taken too long to get to this point. To feel like I can put all the emotion which I, and those who knew you best, are still feeling so greatly into words. I have cried untold times over the past nine months and in so many different places, thinking about how you would've reacted to the madness unfolding before our eyes. With the end of the season approaching now is the right time to reflect on the moments we collected and shared while you were still here.
It's a widely held belief among football fans that you should either a) support the same team as your Dad or b) support the team from the place where you grew up.
To an extent I understand that. Although it’s also true that some of the most passionate fans in the world live hundreds and thousands of miles away from where their team is based. It’s about so much more than geography. I’m also slightly biased, so I like to humbly think of our relationship as the perfect antidote to those constraints.
As your first born, perhaps I should have supported Nottingham Forest. They have a special place in my heart, but my first love was Liverpool. And instead of resisting that (which you so easily could’ve, especially given the often-complicated relationship between the two clubs) you embraced it. You recognised my love for football and allowed me to support who I wanted, which can’t be said of every father. It seemed as if you were just happy to have that connection and start making memories. There were some pretty good ones along the way!
When asked why I didn’t follow your lead, I have always told people the same regurgitated line out of self-defence. I loved watching Michael Owen when I was growing up.
You’d remember how many times I watched the highlights DVD you bought of the famous 5-1 England win in Germany in 2001. Owen’s hat-trick. Heskey’s iconic DJ celebration. The opener being scored by the man who would soon take over as the player I obsessed about the most – Stevie G. There was later a phase when I had to have and wear Adidas Predators to imitate him – and you bought me every pair along the way because, well, of course you did.
The fact you encouraged me to support Liverpool and embraced them as a second team of your own was indicative of your greatest qualities. Having disliked Liverpool as a fierce rival growing up, you were open to change. You saw my passion and allowed it to flourish.
Perhaps it would’ve been different if it wasn’t Owen, too, and this was the real reason you let it slide. You often talked about the World Cup in 1998, watching the German commentary of that goal by “Das Wunderkind!” against Argentina as you travelled across France for the summer. Mum maybe wasn’t so appreciative given that she was carrying me at six months pregnant, but this was my first taste of football before I was even born that September. It was only ever going to end one way.
And then Liverpool took over.
There was Istanbul; another of our favourite football stories when you asked at half time if I wanted to go to sleep as it was only going to end in disaster. ‘No, Liverpool are going to win!’ I replied. Ever the optimist.
I remember so clearly the pride and second-hand excitement you felt for me as I walked out as a mascot hand-in-hand with my hero. It’s a hilarious thought to think back at you stood there on the side of the pitch, watching on as me and Steven Gerrard passed the ball back and forth on the Kenilworth Road pitch.
The FA Cup semi-final at Old Trafford in the same run – when Luis Garcia scored the winner with an unbelievable volley and you lost me in the bedlam for a second. When you caught my eye again I was sat on a random man’s shoulders, rows away from where I’d stood beside you moments earlier.
Later there was the famed Euro 2016 trip – the Nouveau Stade de Bordeaux and the walk back from the Stade de France through the terrifying Parisian suburb of Bobigny. There was the Madrid derby where we paid for four tickets and two were fakes, so you insisted me and Will went in while you watched in a bar round the corner with Mum. There were countless long drives all over the country to watch me play. There were so many amazing memories, Dad.
Then there were the times when I did have to go to bed. The nights I lived the emotion of the match the following morning through your written recaps which made me feel like I hadn’t missed the game at all. The pieces of paper, folded in half and scrawled upon with minute-by-minute key moment summaries that I woke up excited to read. I would briefly play the best and worst possible scenarios over in my head, expecting the former to have unfolded, before leaping out of bed to find the truth sitting on the landing outside the bedroom door.
When I woke up and turned the page to read about Diego Forlan’s extra time Europa League dagger in 2010, I felt the gut punch as if I had lived it on the Kop. A shit start to the day, but there were always more positive memories than bad. Too many to count but so many to cherish.
There were many players who captured our joint imagination but chief of those was Roberto Firmino. From the completely unnecessary flick over Dani Ceballos’s head to the soul-snatching spin he sent Roberto Soldado for and everything else in between, Firmino made it fun. My god you loved watching him play football. I’ll always miss watching him with you and seeing his farewell this weekend felt like another piece of the past being ripped away. Towards the end, we even joked about getting a family dog and you wanted to name it ‘Bobby.’ Will and I are still determined to make this happen.
This is not to say that I don’t love Forest. In fact, they have become a second team and I am utterly unashamed in saying that. I wear it as a badge of honour and a symbol of our unique father-son bond with football.
The relationship between the two clubs is tangled with a lot of regretful things having been said in the past. But I like to appreciate the fact that it comes from our teams being the top two in England and directly competing for trophies. Because of what happened on April 15, 1989, the clubs will forever be linked by tragedy.
You taught me about Hillsborough and having been there that day, educated me on the horrors of what it involved. You hated tragedy chanting, and so you would have been proud of the Forest’s fans’ banner in the away end at Anfield last month. I hope it goes away and human beings can stop singing about other human beings dying at football matches. You were at that game with your younger brother and your Dad, just like I have been so many times myself.
Justice for the 97, forever and always.
One of the great ironies is that you would be reading this, meticulously editing for me, before I published it. I wish you were still here to critique. But for others to have the privilege of getting to know what you were like seems like the next best thing.
It also feels wrong that you’ve missed out on another mad season with such a special ending. It’s now a running joke between Will and I to check your Fantasy team (admittedly dark humour). 91 points last week! I drew you in the semi-finals of our Fantasy League Cup this weekend and while you’d be disappointed by the outcome, you’d no doubt find it funny that back in October it took around a month after you passed for me to overtake you in the league itself…
But when the final whistle went on Saturday to confirm what we believed and talked about together back in August, you were the first person I thought of as I burst uncontrollably into tears.
To paraphrase a certain manager, you weren’t the best Dad in the business. But you were in the top one.
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