The Anglo-Scottish Cup, which had a brief and never particularly beloved life between 1975-76 and 1980-81, always struggled to find a place in the calendar. In its second season, the two legs of the final had to be squeezed into 48 hours, Nottingham Forest drawing 1-1 away at Leyton Orient before a 4-0 win at home. Only 12,717 bothered to turn up at the City Ground to see it. It was all very anticlimactic. Yet that game holds a place in football’s history.
“Our lot tasted champagne,” said Brian Clough, “and found that they liked it.” Forest would win promotion to the First Division that season and, within three years, had added a league title, two European Cups and two League Cups. It had been a similar story for Clough at Derby who, two seasons before lifting the league title, won the Watney Cup, a pre-season tournament for the two highest scorers in each of the four divisions who had not been promoted or qualified for Europe. In both cases, Clough was adamant that the experience of winning even a minor competition was a vital part of the greater glories that followed.
