The secrets of two great rivals locked in an eternal battle for supremacy, usually ending with Nottingham Forest winning – and Liverpool fans driven crazy!

Last week marked half a century since Brian Clough took over at Nottingham Forest. Was there ever a manager in the history of the game who had a more dramatic effect in his first five years in charge?

Promotion, a league title at the first ask, two League Cups, two European Cups and a Super Cup and, as anyone in these parts will tell you, all done with five players from the team he took over, languishing in the old Second Division. No oligarch or oil state money for Clough, who did it the old fashioned way, with brilliant recruitment and man management.

The problem with Clough is that he has become so ubiquitous in football folklore that you can sometimes get lost in the mythical place he has there. ‘When the legend becomes fact, print the legend’ is a line from the film The man who shot Liberty Valance. The line is often used as a way to describe the idea that legends can be just as important as facts.

Clough certainly inhabits this world now. There is a practical cottage industry in Clough stories. People on the after-dinner circuit know how to grab the attention of any audience by saying, “And then I met Cloughie.” The silence that always descends is a testament to the man.

One of my favorites concerns Liverpool. Every great era of sports needs two key players who lift each other to greater heights. Ali and Frazier. Borg and McEnroe. Coe and Ovett. That rivalry is etched into our consciousness.

Why is that? Why do we as humans get so involved when two people, teams or even empires engage in an almighty battle to win? There is something in our DNA when we see mighty warriors touching the gods in their quest to be the best.

In the early days of Clough’s takeover at Forest, there is a story they tell. Forest, who struggled in the old Second Division, had just lost to city rivals Notts County. The next morning at training the new manager told the players with their heads down that if they want to sulk because they think County are their rivals then they should think again!

A few players looked at each other… does he mean Derby? The club was our rivals, he had taken them into the stratosphere and they were two title winners in recent years.

No, gentlemen, said the 40-year-old with eyes full of ambition. I want you to understand that for me our biggest rivals now are Liverpool.

The players now looked at each other in disbelief…

Is he serious? The team that everyone agrees is now probably the best in Europe, if not the world!

He answered for them… oh yes, young men… ‘they’ are the team I want to surpass, and if you don’t believe me, there’s no point in even staying at Nottingham Forest Football Club. Now go get some balls and split into two teams.

Clough was as good as his word when he took Forest to the First Division in 1977. They were favorites, you would believe, a bit like this season, but won in the end.

Now no one on the banks of the Trent thinks Forest will win the title this season, but thanks to good recruitment they have at least avoided a relegation battle. The ambition of the owner plays a major role in this. Clough had an elected committee to deal with, which he did at the end of that season when, instead of turning up in person at the annual post-season meeting, he simply sent a Polaroid of the two cups he had won. Enough said and point made.

But what people also forget are Clough’s three signings when he took over Forest. The best goalkeeper in the world, Peter Shilton, the brilliant little Scottish midfielder Archie Gemmell and a Glasgow striker from Birmingham City called Kenny Burns, who Clough and Peter Taylor decided would become a world-class centre-back. Not a bad bit of recruiting, right? As good as this side was, because it was all built around Forest’s greatest ever player, John Robertson, a small, stocky winger who could turn your defense inside out and land the ball from the corners on a sixpence, the problem was Liverpool Football Club. .

Let’s just talk about how great they were. Many say this is their best team ever and there are a few to choose from. They had moved seamlessly from the game’s other great personality manager, Bill Shankly, to his quieter but in some ways more effective assistant Bob Paisley.

Paisley turned Liverpool into the biggest winning machine in the world. The now famous banner that hung on the Kop indeed expressed it beautifully. ‘We will collect cups here in May’. And boy, did they and all that.

For a kid like me growing up in South Wales, we could name both teams because they locked horns like two giant Texan bulls.

Clemence, the Kennedys, King Kenny, McDermott, Hughes, Thompson. Boys shouted in the schoolyard: ‘we are Liverpool!’. Others would respond immediately. Shilton, Anderson, Larry and Kenny, Woodcock, Birtles and Robbo. ‘We are Bos!’. We knew their names. Still. There were songs about them in the charts.

They seemed perpetually in the final, both in some sort of eternal boxing-style battle of 15 rounds, with haymakers landing, but in the end Forest seemed to be winning. It drove Liverpool and their fans crazy. I remember it after I made the movie I believe in miracles a Scouser comes to me in Sorrento, Italy.

“I loved your movie boy and it reminded me of how frustrated we got!” Our best team ever and we just couldn’t catch these motherfuckers that came out of nowhere!’

We both laughed because it was so strange that Europe’s biggest rivals were barely two hours away by car in the late 1970s and yet won all five European Cups between 1977 and 1981. Read that again and imagine that? Two clubs that literally traded the biggest prize in domestic football for almost half a decade.

They were that good. It was that intense. They even played against each other in a European Cup match. It is undoubtedly Forest’s most famous home win, beating the double champions 2-0 on a night watched by millions on ITV in the days when football was almost never on TV.

Young Garry Birtles scored his first ever goal and Colin Barrett scored the second, earning him mythical status among Forest fans to this day. They still sing a song about him beating the Scousers almost fifty years later.

Speaking of which, the Kop also sings a song. It’s about their biggest rivals. Of course it’s about Everton and Manchester United, but the song actually starts about a team they haven’t even played against for twenty years.

The younger generation, having grown up with Sky Sports and Liverpool vs United as the match of the season, must have wondered what they were singing about?

To the tune of Land of Hope and Glory, the ‘We hate Nottingham Forest’ begins and Liverpool fans of a certain generation roar out with nostalgic smiles as they remember one of the greatest rivalries in football history.

When they finally met again in the FA Cup a few years ago, Liverpool TV did a wonderful piece to educate their younger fanbase on how, in a country and a long time ago, ‘this’ was the rivalry.

I love that it all started on a miserable morning after a defeat to Notts County and with one man’s dreams of taking his new team to the top.

He knew he had to set the heights of his team and club as high as possible to go and that was to go after the mighty Liverpool.

There is no greater compliment and the Forest players must try to do that again on Tuesday.

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