The Good – Archive
Bolton Wanderers…4 Nottingham Forest…3
26th September 1993
The live TV cameras turned up at Burnden Park to watch the newly promoted Wanderers take on hot title favourites Nottingham Forest... they weren’t disappointed.
In this amazing season we were to see many valiant and great performances. You only have to look at our amazing cup run that saw us knock out Premier League Everton, Arsenal and Aston Villa. But in the early months of that season we were treated to an epic game that saw us come-back from 2-0 down and then from a further goal deficit against a Forest team heading straight up into the Premiership. With a side full of talent including, at the time one of the most in form young strikers in England, Stan Collymore, a recent £2m signing, Forest would certainly provide difficult opposition and be a prized scalp to take.
The Whites were in very inconsistent form with 2-0 away win over Luton Town and a 2-1 home defeat by Leicester City in the league and a 2-0 home win over Sunderland in the Anglo-Italian Cup and an unlucky 1-1 home draw against Sheffield Wednesday in the Coca Cola Cup. This topsy turvy form was to be the same story all season really with the F.A Cup run being the main distraction.
The week leading up to this match was one of those in which I could not wait. Something just told me that this was going to be a good one, but nothing could have prepared me for what was to come. The game started with both sides sharing possession with equal opportunities and it was evident after 15 minutes or so that this was going to be an eventful game. Forest then took the lead on 18 with who else but Stan Collymore, he made mince meat out of temporary centre-half Julian Darby to slot home with ease. Forest then went two up with David Phillips scoring a screamer sending a rocket into Keith Branagan’s top left. With possession relatively equal we did not deserve to be two-down but we were and we needed a quick reply to keep our heads above the sand.
With David Lee showing great form on the wing and having a few chances come his way it appeared that he would be our route back into the game. He finally converted one of his chances just before the break from seven yards out thanks to good work from the gritty Mark Patterson.
“We made it 2-2 with around half an hour to go with a great ball through by arguably man of the match Scott Green to Alan Thompson who ran on to send a sweet outside-of-the-boot-curler into the bottom right hand corner.”
As the second half kicked-off the mood in the Bolton sections was one of anticipation as we had easily matched a side who were tipped for promotion and had recently been a Premier League team. We made it 2-2 with around half an hour to go with a great ball through by arguably man of the match Scott Green to Alan Thompson who ran on to send a sweet outside-of-the-boot-curler into the bottom right hand corner with his first touch. Something told me at the time that wasn’t going to be the last Alan Thompson pearler we were going to see in the distant future. However just as it looked as though we were going to take the game by the scruff of the neck, disaster struck with some dodgy defending allowing a hopeful blind ball to make its way to Stan Collymore who at three yards out was not going to miss to make it 3-2 to the visitors.
As the game again was just as equal as ever both teams were coming very close with the tricky Lee creating most of the damage for us. Then with some fantastic work by Jason McAteer and yet another through ball from Green it was left to David Lee to run the ball through and finish superbly to send the Bolton fans wild. It was certainly nice to see Lee actually converting his chances and playing to his full potential as we all new he could.
Just as the crowd began to think this was the end of the scoring, with the game heading for a draw things took a further turn for the better. With Bolton having most of possession in the final third of the field the icing was put on the cake as once again Green crossed to Mark Patterson. As he deflected the ball across goal towards the bottom corner of Tommy Wright’s net the guy in front of me said to himself – “surely not, it can’t be, it’s in!” – in utter disbelief as the ball trickled home to send the exhausted Bolton fans delirious. The game finished 4-3 with neither side really deserving to lose. But we had showed the determination and spirit that had been missing for so long up until the previous season.
That day was to be over shadowed that year by cup ties such as Everton away but that match takes some beating in my mind and certainly is up there as one of the most entertaining games seen in the past decade.
This story featured in issue 33 of White Love, but was an actual duplicate of a “Good” that had featured previously, and so this version of the match didn’t make the “GBU” book.