Right ... back to sport. I grew up in Nottingham in the heyday of Brian Clough's Forest in the 1970s and 1980s. As a Southampton fan. So I never luxuriated in the glory of THIS ... football's greatest miracle.

[A short thread]

What Leicester achieved in 2015-16, in football's "monied era", was magnificent. Astonishing, and rightly lauded. But ... for sheer and utter alchemy, for genius, and chemistry and charisma, those 77-80 years of Clough's Forest will never be topped.

As a sports writer you occasionally work on stories that are an absolutely pleasure from start to finish. And this was one of them. With @IanHerbs, a piece for the MoS about Forest's 1980 European Cup win, 40 years ago this month

https://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/sport/football/article-8303871/40-years-scale-European-Cup-win-Brian-Cloughs-Nottingham-Forest-hard-match.html

Huge thanks to Ian Bowyer (and son Gary), and Garry Birtles, and captain John McGovern and everyone else who spoke to us about that extraordinary night in 1980, and that era.

For loads of evocative footage of Clough and the Forest teams of that era (and the Liverpool side who won European Cups in 1977 and 1978), I can't recommend this ITV doc highly enough

British football has had its share of extraordinary, eccentric and winning managers, not least (post WW2) Ferguson, Shanks, Wenger, Paisley, Busby, Revie, Dalglish & Mourinho among others. But Clough, as a maverick and achiever .... is way up there.

Cloughie in Nottm in 70s and 80s was familiar to all. Forest's trophies toured schools, mine included, just a few hundred hards along The Trent from the City Ground. Cloughie marked up the papers in his brother's newsagents on Sunday mornings, in Bramcote

When Clough sold Birtles to MUFC and signed the "next great hope" of English football to replace him (Pete Ward, a family friend), in 1980, Cloughie came to our house a couple of times, as recounted in @jonawils Cloughie biog

Upshot: the miracle of Brian Clough's Forest was a feat never seen before or since in English football and reached its peak at the European Cup final of 1980, an occasion recalled in this piece. Loved working on this, with @ianherbs

https://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/sport/football/article-8303871/40-years-scale-European-Cup-win-Brian-Cloughs-Nottingham-Forest-hard-match.html