blackNwhites

We have to be winning that title, sure, we're having to be cautious but we're starting with a clean slate now. 

Wasn't watching closely as I am at a Christmas party but we should've won that game! 

Definitely improving throughout the season.

9 hours ago, Brailsford Ram said:

Zeljeznicar Sarajevo 1 Derby County 2

At the weekend, Derby had been beaten 3-0 at bottom-of-the table Manchester United.

Steve Powell was still just 16 years old and Derby had to obtain special permission and a licence from Bow Street Magistrates Court to allow him to travel and ‘play for profit’ while abroad. The team and the press contingent were staying at the Terme Hotel in the centre of Sarajevo, having flown to Yugoslavia on the Monday. The Rams team was scheduled to fly home at 9.30am on Thursday to prepare for the home game against Spurs on Saturday.

Chairman Sam Longson was a collector of teapots and was delighted to receive a large oriental teapot as a gift from his counterpart at one of the receptions held prior to the game. It is still on display in a cabinet at Pride Park. The game was scheduled to be televised by ITV, but at the last moment, Zeljeznicar refused permission for the transmission, denying Derby fans at home the sight of their team playing away in Europe for the first time. ITV had negotiated a contract with the Yugoslav national television organisation and commentator Hugh Johns and a production crew had flown out with the team. In the end ITV switched their coverage to the Leeds United v MKE Ankaragucu UEFA Cup Winners Cup tie. Hugh Johns said that the decision “left me angry and speechless.”

Two planes flew us supporters to Sarajevo. One was a day trip, which I think left East Midlands later on the morning of the match. I went on the other, which was a two days trip, costing £35, which roughly equated to the national average weekly wage at the time. We were up at the crack of dawn on the day of the game to board coaches from the BBG to take us to Luton Airport.

The trip was organised by a specialist sports travel company called 4S Sports, pioneered by David Dryer, who continued in that line of business for the next 30 years.

We headed for the return leg in Yugoslavia, wondering what lay ahead in this great new adventure, that none of us could have possibly imagined in our wildest dreams just a few short years before. This happened to the very big clubs, not us surely?  Remember that unlike today only the champions of a country were allowed to enter this competition. So, we were the sole English entry. It was an exclusive competition for just the champions and not the pretenders.

We arrived at the Europa Hotel in Sarajevo city centre in the early afternoon. After sampling the local brew we were taken on coaches to the stadium where, among the 60,000 spectators I sat next to the young Michael Dunford. He was my age and worked in the club ticket office at the time. He later rose to be the club secretary and then CEO. 

We travelled from the hotel to the Kosevo Stadium by coach. While the stadium looked impressive, the area around it was a sea of mud, in which several cars had become stuck. There was little cover in the stadium and the wooden benches which were our seats were sodden from persistent afternoon rain.

Following the defeat at Old Trafford, Derby made two changes with the young Steve Powell and the ineligible David Nish, being replaced by Peter Daniel and John Robson in the full back positions. The local newspaper, Strana, spelt the names in the Derby team in their own modified way as ‘Bolton, Deniel, Robson, Henesi, Mackfarland, Tod, Mackgovern, Gemel, O’hara, Hector, Hinton.’

The kick-off was at 8.30pm local time. The pitch was not in good condition and the goalmouths had been returfed the day before the game. During the pre-match warm-up, the players rolled shots across the new bumpy turf to give Colin Boulton an idea of what would happen during match conditions. If the the first leg was anything to go by, then Derby knew to expect a rough time and not to expect too much protection from the referee. It was important not to give the home crowd too much to cheer about. But fear not for the tie was settled in the first 15 minutes with goals from Alan Hinton and John O’Hare, meaning the home team then had to score five to have any chance of going through to the next round.

The first goal came in nine minutes when Hector raced clear down the left; his cross was only cleared as far as McGovern who squared the ball to Hinton whose ground shot from the edge of the area beat the helpless Janjus. Just six minutes later, McGovern broke on the left to cross for O’Hare who didn’t have to break his stride to score with ease. The goals were cue for us to dodge a volley of bottles and flares thrown by the disappointed home supporters standing in adjacent pens.

Katalinski was booked when he deliberately tripped Gemmill. Derby were in complete control of the game and their calm, controlled passing and ability to break forward was a constant threat, The Yugoslav forwards hardly had a kick with McFarland marking Bukal out of the game and Todd sweeping up everything else.

With half an hour left, the home team managed to score when Spreco evaded a Daniel challenge to shoot past Boulton, despite a suspicion that he had handled the ball. Bozo Jankovic, who went on to play for Middlesbrough in 1979 to 1981, was sent off four minutes from time for kicking and punching Colin Todd from behind. In some ways it was too little too late from the referee as others deserved to have been dismissed over the two legs for the constant body-checking, hacking down from behind, thigh-high tackles, shirt-tugging and punching.

It is usual in some countries to light fires in the stands as a sign of surrender to show that the fans had lost faith. With Derby comfortably in front this happened with scarves, newspapers and even the wooden benches being burned, all of which was deemed a dangerous act by UEFA who subsequently fined Zeljeznicar for failing to control the crowd.

Gerald Mortimer for the DET was full of praise for the performance, ‘The Rams display must be ranked as one of the finest an English side has ever produced away from home and it exposed the tatty cynicism of the Yugoslavian tactics.’

The Yugoslav press were very complimentary about Derby over the two legs, having been ‘slaughtered’ in Derby, and overall they concluded that Derby was ‘the best they had seen from a foreign side….Colin Todd tonight was wonderful but you won’t let him play for England! And McFarland….what a player!’ This was a reference to the fact that Todd and Alan Hudson (Chelsea) were banned by England for refusing to tour with the England under-23 team during the summer.

At the end of the game we were taken back to the hotel where dinner awaited us. As we sat at our tables enjoying pre-meal drinks, we were amazed to unexpectedly see Brian Clough and Peter Taylor walk into the dining room followed by the team. Cue for us all to stand and cheer them in. Cloughie walked around the room and stopped and spoke to the fans at every table. He certainly knew how to keep the people happy.

When he arrived at our table, one of my mates sat there with a solemn look on his face. He was quite shy and probably awestruck at what he was witnessing. Noticing his demeanour, Cloughie asked him “What’s wrong young man? Cheer up. Are you a Forest fan?” With the benefit of hindsight, that remark now seems so horribly ironic.

It later emerged, that not being happy with the over-physicality of the opposition players, Brian had snubbed the post-match reception, explaining that he and his team had to go to thank their fans, saying to the waiting press, ‘you can’t ignore fans like that.‘ This apparently caused some offence to the home club who were left to host just our board of directors. I bet that tickled Cloughie.

We who were lucky enough to be present loved that night in the hotel in Sarajevo, mingling with our heroes. When the bar closed, Clough and Taylor slipped away into the night, leaving the players, the younger fans and the national football journalists free to move on to a local nightclub, which stayed open until 4.00am. 

Our enjoyment continued but the music played by the local band was rather tiresome, wholly unlike our popular English music of the time, and the belly-dancers weren’t too pleasing on the eye. This became just too much for the most unlikely of our players. Just before the club was due to close, Kevin Hector put his treasured right foot through the drum skin. This caused some disquiet among the locals but Roy McFarland was able to calm matters and avoid an international diplomatic incident. A whip round was held and the damage was paid for.

We made our way back to the hotels with the journalists while the players left for the team’s hotel. Not a single written word appeared in the national press about that bloody drum. Haven’t times changed? But the King was right. The music was bloody awful.

Early on the Thursday afternoon, we left the beautiful city of Sarajevo, overlooked by the surrounding mountains. Despite the pyrotechnics and histrionics in the stadium, we had been warmly welcomed by the local inhabitants and the Zeljeznicar football supporters. Our hotel was close to the bridge where Archduke Ferdinand had been assassinated in the event that precipitated the First World War and close to the exotic Markale market.

On a more sombre note, the siege of Sarajevo by Bosnian Serb forces from April 5, 1992, to February 29, 1996, during the Bosnian War was the longest siege in modern European history through the 20th century. Before fighting broke out in Bosnia and Herzegovina in April 1992, Bosnian Serbs constructed reinforced artillery positions in the hills overlooking Sarajevo, reasoning that if they could crush resistance there, they might crush it everywhere. Once the conflict began they occupied the positions and some of the city suburbs and imposed a total blockade, denying Sarajevo food, power, and water. Although far better armed than the militia defending the city, Serbian forces lacked the numbers to storm it, so they settled in to pound it into submission. The militia, despite superior numbers, lacked the weapons to break the siege. It became a contest of endurance.

Serb artillery inflicted great damage: on average more than 300 shells struck Sarajevo every day, and targets such as schools, hospitals, and homes were not spared. Nearly every building in the city was damaged. Snipers added to the dangers, and nowhere in the city was safe. Sarajevo came near to starvation before the United Nations, in control of the international airport, organised humanitarian relief. A tunnel, completed in mid-1993, connected city and airport, allowing supplies through. But malnutrition became a serious problem, and in winter the elderly perished in unheated homes. The shelling, especially two ugly incidents at the Markale market, infuriated world opinion.

In May 1996 NATO launched air strikes against Bosnian Serb troops, eventually forcing them to accept the Dayton Accords, which lifted the siege.

During the war, the auxiliary football ground of the Kosevo Olympic stadium was turned into a cemetery because there was not enough space to bury the dead in ordinary graveyards. The football pitch became a mass grave. After the siege was ended, the bodies were moved to a newly purpose built war cemetery adjacent to the stadium.

That all came about two decades after Derby County went to Sarajevo. The people I met in Sarajevo welcomed us and were friendly towards us, almost envious of us; they didn’t deserve what came their way in the 1990s. Who did deserve that? Sectarianism has a lot to answer for.

The draw for the second round was made on 2nd October in Rome with Derby being allocated No. 14. Sam Longson, Mike Keeling, Stuart Webb and Peter Taylor were in attendance as Derby were drawn against the Portuguese champions, Benfica, with the first leg at home. The Fleet Street journalists wrote off Derby’s chances as soon as the draw was made, citing the pedigree and experience of the Eagles from Lisbon. They expected Benfica to cruise past Derby - ‘Easy prey for the Eagles’ was one of the headlines in the sports pages. Peter Taylor kept those newspaper cuttings and used them to help motivate the players in the run-up to the game. After the draw, Brian Clough said ‘I am absolutely over the moon about this one and so are the lads. This will pack our ground with as many outside trying to get in.’ Peter Taylor echoed those thoughts - ‘this will be something special for our players.’

Fantastic post, thanks for the good read.

1 minute ago, Danelaw Rams said:

? winning on the possession ?

If ya don't have a shot, you don't miss the target...like Sibley just did.

37 minutes ago, Crewton said:

 

I hope they come as a combination, that was the most exciting year we've had as a club since the Premier league. All went down hill the year after.

He's watching the Jonny Depp court case.

He got booked for it as well, shocking decision.

Remember when he was a quality, up and coming English midfielder though?

Never leaves the pitch with a clean shirt, always covered in dirt bless him.

I cant decide whether Reading's double Ince signing in the past couple of weeks is a masterstroke or just plain barmy.

Inevitably, we're gonna have games like that for the rest of the season. We've got a lot of young lads in our first team now and those big games are gonna weigh heavy on them. Occasionally though we'll batter teams like Hull.

That's why players like Shinnie and Jagielka were so important. Even Bielik is still looking for first team experience on a consistent basis.

Lawrence just called the referee a banker, everyone needs to calm down. Long game ahead here.

25 minutes ago, Nick_Ram said:

How much can the board influence the fee? If they can approach him and just pay a compensation fee, maybe this deal works better for us than what any comp would be. 

Let's be honest, we're not exactly the most attractive team to play for right now... 

I'm gonna stick my neck out a bit here and suggest differently. We might not be scoring tons of goals, but we're a team loaded with young lads given a chance in the first team that have come from our very own academy. It's not a new phenomenon, we've been doing it more progressively for years now. 

We don't play unattractive football either, particularly since Rooney has taken over. We've had a way of playing since the end of Clough's tenure, in various different forms but the stamp has been there, also for years. Let's forget the Rowett year.

Sure, we've had a terrible start to the season but the last twelve games haven't been terrible. They've actually been quite positive, plenty to feel good about in a footballing sense, and that's all a young player should be concerned about. Getting a chance for first team football.

I'd hope any young player showing promise has good advisers around him, we've got to be one of the most attractive looking clubs for any youngster wanting to play first team football. Especially one from our own academy. Only thing is, so are Liverpool, and they're a massive club that gives youth a chance.

I wouldn't blame him for wanting to go to Liverpool, but with him being on the fringes of the first team here he must be tempted to stay and take the chance he's been given.

Newcastle ?‍♂️

Even their manager is a bit Billy Davies like isn't he, slightly old fashioned, slightly bonkers. Just needs someone else to replace him, like Alan Pardew?

Not even sure how it hit his arm? Looked to hit the back of his head to me, either way, how are you going to avoid that when it's belted at you from point blank range. There's no logic with this VAR.

Harry Kane's goal chalked off, most pathetic VAR decision ever seen.

Is it just me or are the adverts taking over the forum?

Anyone know why I can't get sound through the audio option?

Seems to have sorted itself now...unless 10 mins before kick off is the usual thing?

Badger ale, I love it.