Steve Stone, Ian Woan, Mark Crossley, Jason Lee and co reminisce about Forest’s 1995-96 Uefa Cup campaign
We beat Malmö in the first round, which brought back good memories of beating them to win the [1978‑79] European Cup. We were 2-0 down at half-time against Bayern in the second leg of the quarter-final, 4-1 on aggregate, and I looked at the players and decided that if we were going to go out we may as well go out in a blaze of glory.
We played the best available team every game. Looking back, it backfired a little bit at the end of the league season because in the last half a dozen games the lads ran out of steam. Against Lyon in the first leg, it was 0-0 after about 70 minutes and I replaced Andrea Silenzi and Bryan Roy with Bobby Howe and Paul McGregor. We got a penalty, which Stuart Pearce saw saved, but Paul lashed in the rebound. I went to the press conference and got hammered for taking off two internationals and putting two kids on. We’d won, but sometimes you can’t win.
About 10 of us are planning to go to Utrecht for the last league‑phase game. We have a group that meets every Thursday in West Bridgford: Colin Barrett, John Robertson, Garry Birtles, John O’Hare, Ian Storey-Moore … Steve Cooper and his staff used to pop in; Sean Dyche sometimes comes … Ian Woan, Paul Hart. Eighteen months ago, getting back into Europe was just not on the horizon for Forest. The atmosphere at the City Ground will be incredible; last season it was better than it ever was when I was manager or a player.
