The League leaders come to the CG

Our next game after the international break was against the surprise leaders of the Championship, Burnley. Their success seems to have been built on the back of their free-scoring strikers, Ings and Vokes. They started off the season really well, but have stuttered lately, drawing their last two league games.

I recently looked at my videos of the season so far (visits to grounds and not videos of the actual games played) and realised that I had not taken any camcorder pictures of the two Nottingham clubs, my own Forest and Notts County. As it was a fine day, I decided to rectify one omission and visit Meadow Lane, the Notts ground, prior to the kick off of our match.

I knew the ground would be open because Notts County allow parking in their ground before matches at the City Ground and also allow the supporters of visiting clubs to have refreshment in the Meadow Bar at the ground. The grounds are very close together, but one has to cross the Trent to reach Meadow Lane. This leads to the curious anomaly that Notts County are in the City, but Nottingham Forest, who play at the City Ground, aren't. I'm assured that this is just a historical anomaly because we were in the City until boundaries were redefined.

Anyway, I chose to cross the River Trent by Lady Bay Bridge, partly because it is closer to my parking space and partly because people always take photos of our ground from Trent Bridge and I decided to get a different angle. Also, going into Meadow Lane that way allows a good shot of both grounds, showing just how close they are, about 300 yards as the crow flies.

I checked with the very nice man at the main gate of Notts County who was supervising car parking and he was quite happy for me to roam around for my pictures. I filmed from the Meadow Lane or Family Stand end first and then walked down past the Derek Pavis Stand to the other end of the ground.

Derek Pavis was, for a good few years, a director at Nottingham Forest, but was voted off the board by shareholders, apparently at the instigation of Brian Clough, who said in his autobiography he "detested" him (Pavis). He was enough of an egotist to name the main stand after himself rather than any great players or managers from the club's past. At the back of the Pavis Stand, for instance is the Lawton Lounge, dedicated to the most famous player of his era who surprisingly joined Third Division Notts County from First Division Chelsea in 1947 for a then record fee of £20,000!

Notts have also hosted Forest on a couple of occasions. Just after WWII the City Ground was unusable due to flood for the game v. Manchester City (a Division 2 game on 23 November 1946) and, after the Main Stand fire during the Leeds United game on 24 August 1968, Forest played 6 games at Meadow Lane. I don't think we won any of those games, so it is a good job we haven't played more games there!

There is also a great deal of yellow about the place, which caused me to wonder why. After all, their  home colours are the famous black and white stripes leading to their nickname of "The Magpies".

It turns out that their first strip was actually yellow and black hoops, which answers that question.

Whilst walking back to the CG for our match I fell in with some Burnley supporters who were intrigued to hear of our Centre Half crisis, seeing as their main men are the striker duo. Wilson and Collins are out long term and our main defensive utility man, Greg Halford, was injured in training. Less serious, but still a concern for today, our other main CH, Jack Hobbs, who has been a tower of strength since arriving on loan (though he has actually been purchased. Rumour has it the loan is a device to avoid Hull paying part of the transfer fee to his former club Leicester City. The loan was for the whole season, which takes him to the end of his contract with Hull City, then a fee has been agreed for him to sign a two year contract with us) has been out all week with a virus. Our only fit CH is Jamaal Lascelles, who turned 20 last week and has played only a hand full of first team games.

In the event Hobbs played, though obviously not fully fit. We also lost Andy Reid and David Vaughan to the curse of the International break, they came back from their respective squads with injuries. Thus we were without 6 first team players against top of the league Burnley.

The team put up one of their better performances of the season, with the feared strike partnership of the Clarets having not a sniff of a goal. Actually, Vokes did score, but from a hotly disputed penalty. Jara was ruled to have committed the offence of handling the ball from a right wing cross on the half hour mark. How he was supposed to lunge for the ball and then try to avoid a cross hit hard from about two yards away from his hand is not clear to me. The lino, who was about 5 yards from the incident did not move a muscle, whilst the ref, from 30 yards away, signalled the penalty. Darlow went the right way and oh, so nearly saved it.

A travesty. However, shortly before half time Simon Cox managed to connect with a little dinked cross from Paterson at the far post and levelled up the scores. We pounded away at them (we had 63% of the possession and 19 shots against their three!) but could not find the winner. Everything but. Hit the cross bar, goal mouth scrambles, but it just wouldn't happen. Still, if we play like that for the rest of the season, we'll win more than we lose. Our young Jamaal Lascelles was voted man of the match, a distinction with which few would argue. He was rumoured to have been a target for Arsenal a couple of years ago, but, hopefully his long-term future is with us.

One last word on our opponents. On that performance they will have trouble staying in the playoffs, let alone going for the automatic places. Their manager claimed it was an off day, but honestly they showed little, no flashes of inspiration at all.