Nottingham Forest

Fixture	Saturday 18 August 2012, 1500 Nottingham Forest 1 – 0 Bristol City FLC,
Venue	The City Ground
Weather/Conditions	Sultry
Away fans	Fairly quiet, did not make presence felt much.
Timekeeping	6 minutes late (no apparent reason).  How come 3pm came and went and the players not even on the pitch, let alone kicked off?  Will we ever understand why home games never kick off on time?
Atmosphere	Lively at first, like you’d expect on opening day, quietened down as HT approached.
The Match	Typical opening day stuff, with both sides cancelling each other out, neither ‘keeper severely tested early on.  Forest making more headway down right than left but some good passing football nevertheless, and good use of options. Probably had Draw written all over it at least until HT, and certainly in keeping with our opening day form of late. Good defending ensured it was unlikely to be an opening day defeat, however. What joy to see the best opening day to a campaign since 2006.
Highlights	Guedioura’s goal scored from great counter-attack with 6 red shirts against 3 defenders. Move started by Reidy and cued perfectly by Simon Cox from right. A clean sheet to ensure our first opening-day win in six years!
Lowlights	Manbags exchanged between Reidy and Greg Cunningham following the latter’s ‘Michael Branch’ tactics following a halt in play.  No return welcome for this ex-loanee.
Hero	Reid, Cox, Collins and Guedioura.
Zero	No-one
Referee	Turned down a couple of decent Forest penalty shouts, but missed a possible handball, so overall not bad.
5=Relegation fodder 4=Flirting with danger 3=Mid-table 2=Play-offs 1=Promoted Promotion Rating	3, but its early days, so let’s see how the rest of the month pans out before these ratings start to mean anything.
Entertainment Value	6.5/10 – A reasonably entertaining game, though goals a typically scarce commodity.
Misc	New-look programme, decent quality though new shape (45rpm record shape) unwieldy – aarrgghh!

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