By theimps.tk
October 22 2009

Nottingham Forest are the biggest local club to Lincoln. Located 30 miles away, the City Ground has seen Premiership and even UEFA Cup football in the recent past, but does the away day experience live up to the hype?

Not being far from Lincoln, Nottingham hosts two clubs that are great to go and watch if Lincoln aren't playing. The first time I went was to watch Manchester United play there and came away with a great 8-1 victory. The other times I've been, have just been for randomness. The one I'm reporting on is their FA Cup game against Spurs. It's odd when I go to watch Forest these days because I never generally give a crap. If they score, I just stand up and politely clap. Even when I lived in Nottingham for a year, the only times I went to watch them was when I quite literally had nothing else to do.

Obviously the main methods of going to Forest are train or car. For most of the first few visits, I was going by the train, but I'll talk about my journey's via car first of all. The only time I visited the ground via car before I moved to the city was to watch them face Salisbury City. I had no idea where to park, luckily I was with a friend and he knew you could park at the nearby council offices.

Whilst in the city, I was luckily able to find plenty of places to park during the day......but none were overly cheap if you wanted to make a day of it. The nearest proper car park (and I mean proper car park, not just a random industrial estate) is the one at the Broadmarsh Shopping Centre, costing £2.70 per hour. However, if you're willing for a slightly longer journey then travel to the Forest Green tram stop, parking is free here and it's a 10 minute tram ride to the train station.

With regards to the train, I got off the train and felt a little lost because although I'd been to Nottingham a lot in my life, I hadn't been paying attention to where I was going when I'd been before (mainly because my friends were all Forest fans), I knew the general direction but that was about it. However, I was with my friend Matt, who didn't have the slightest clue where the ground was so it was up to me. Anyway, we eventually made it to the ground where we picked up our pre-booked tickets before going into the club shop.

The shop itself is fairly cramped and there are a few people in that at once then there could be a bit of a problem. We proceeded to go around Nottingham for a while before returning to the City Ground for the game. Being the first in the ground, we had a good chance to find our seats without having to worry about other people. Although it took a fair old while, we eventually found the seats and it turned out we were sat at the top of the Trent End.

The view from this section of the stand (as you can tell from the pictures) was brilliant and the only view in the ground that was better was from the Brian Clough Stand. The Brian Clough Stand is a very nice two tiered stand and offers and excellent view. The West Bridgford Stand a good stand but due to the length of the pitch, if you're in the away half, the view of the action is quite poor. The final stand is the poorest of the lot although still good in it's quality. Now that Forest have been relegated, this is arguably the best ground in the bottom half of the football League.

The one thing that has always surprised me about the City Ground is the very poor atmosphere at Forest, is poor, only smear smatterings of singers make it difficult for them to get any real noise going although when they score it is very very loud. In a city that is full of fans that are passionate about Forest (something I know all about after living in Nottingham for a year), you'd think their fans would voice that passion at the games, and I've been to enough of their matches to establish that they have a poor atmosphere.

Overall, Forest is a good day out and a good addition to the Football League, but don't expect an atmosphere

Nottingham Forest's City Ground

Discussion started by theimps.tk (IP Logged), 22/10/2009 20:40

theimps.tk
22/10/2009 20:40

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