Ange Postecoglou could barely believe the scene during his first training sessions at Nottingham Forest. “John McGovern was running around chasing balls today and I’m going, ‘What are you doing, John? You are a legend, you don’t have to do that.'”

It is true that McGovern does not have to do this. But he wants to do it. It has become part of the routine for the man who captained Forest to two European Cup wins. He turns 76 later this month but still gets a kick out of his daily visits to the training ground.

“It is not quite as good as actually joining in,” McGovern tells Sky Sports. “Obviously, those days are long gone. But it is nice to see the players in training.” The Scot has been doing this for years now, a tradition initiated by former Forest manager Steve Cooper.

“Before that, nobody had even mentioned me going to training,” McGovern explains. “I said to Steve that I would come to have a look. I thought it would be two days and that would be it. But he said, ‘No, I want you to come up every day.’ I thought he was joking.”

The habit continued under Nuno Espirito Santo. “I asked Nuno if it would be alright, I would not just turn up. He left it entirely up to me but made it clear I was welcome.” Now, Postecoglou is happy for this personification of Forest’s glory days to stick around.

McGovern attends each session unless his ambassadorial commitments take precedence. He enjoys the banter with characters such as Ola Aina. “I shake hands with all of them,” he says. “One or two have some questions. It’s just a nice thing, isn’t it?”

He adds: “Obvious, they were informed who I was when I first started going so they have been respectful. That respect is mutual. I don’t bother them with anything, I just literally watch them train, watch them enjoying it. It takes me back to the days when I did it.”

What’s changed since then? He laughs. “The first day I walked out at the academy, I heard this buzzing noise. And I was looking around thinking, what’s that? Somebody pointed out to me that it was a drone filming the training. And then you feel really old.”

As for the pitches, a man who spent six seasons calling Derby County’s old Baseball Ground home can hardly believe it. “They were moaning the other day because there was not enough water on it or something. They don’t know what a thing called mud is!”

He describes the facilities as “slightly more luxurious” than his seven-year stint as a Forest player under Brian Clough when it would be runs along the river bank and “taking a couple of shirts to make some goals on the local park” – not that this always worked out.

“We would be getting chased off by the groundsman,” he recalls. “He said, ‘I’ve got a quarter-final on here on Saturday, get off the pitch.’ We were playing in the semi-final of the European Cup that same week! We still had to clear off and find another spot.”

No wonder McGovern talks of “modern players being protected” – and that is before the subject of money crops up. “When I first started, my wages went down in the summer. They said, ‘Well, there are no games.'” But he sees more similarities than differences.

“It is such a privilege to have the ability to play sport. Most people spend their money going to gymnasiums, joining cricket or tennis clubs and all that. As a professional sportsman, they actually pay you to do something that you enjoy. What a bonus.”

‘Mum was more frightening than Clough’

They remain the happiest of memories for the midfielder so integral to those famous victories in Munich in 1979 and Madrid in 1980. His relationship with Clough was defining, playing for him at Hartlepool, Derby and Leeds even before the Forest years.

“I met Brian Clough when I was 16.” So the story goes, Peter Taylor told Clough to lock the doors of the training ground and not open them until the teenager had signed the contract. Was the young McGovern not intimidated by this duo? Not at all, he insists.

“My working relationship with him was easy because the discipline I had at home was absolutely iron. To this day, people ask me if Brian Clough frightened me. I say, ‘You never met my mum, did you?’ Clough did once and he got frightened to death by her.”

“She wanted me to go to university but Clough said, ‘Look, Mrs McGovern, I’ll give you £5 if he plays in the reserves and £10 if he plays a first-team game. After I played two reserve games, my mum asked where the money was. I told her he must have forgotten.

“She said, ‘Right, I’m coming with you to the ground.’ She knocked on his door wanting the money but Clough never carried money. He had to find his secretary to get it. As my mum was leaving, he said: ‘Don’t you ever bring your mother to this ground again.'”

Formidable, then, but forged by tragedy. McGovern’s father died when he was 11 years old, killed on his final day working on the building of the Kariba Dam on the Zambezi River. He had been there years, having gone to Africa in search of work. McGovern never knew him.

“He was due to catch a flight home that day. He never even saw me play football at all. My mum had to be disciplined to bring up three kids. She was a very strong woman, mentally and physically. That is why Clough’s discipline was never a problem for me.”

There were happy times at Hartlepool, winning promotion for the first time in their history. “That gave me a big thrill. Still does when I think about it.” At Derby, they won promotion and went on to lift the title as champions of England. Leeds was a different experience.

“An absolute nightmare. I experienced for the first time in football getting booed by both sets of fans when I ran out onto the pitch. I can laugh about it now but it was not very pleasant for my other half in the stands. The verbal abuse I got there was ridiculous.”

McGovern lasted a little longer than Clough at Elland Road but linked up with him again once he got the Forest job. The old magic returned when Taylor showed up in 1976. “He signed the players. I knew that later when we signed Raimondo Ponte,” laughs McGovern.

“I had been left out and was watching him play from the bench when Clough turned to me. He said, ‘You know what’s wrong with Ponte, don’t you?’ I said, ‘Well, no, but I’m sure you’ll tell me, boss.’ He said, ‘I bloody signed him, that’s what’s wrong with him.'”

Sunday 5th October 1:00pm


Kick off 2:00pm

At this point, speaking in an office at the City Ground, McGovern is in after-dinner speech mode where he can still regale an attentive audience with tales of yesteryear. The anecdotes are only interrupted when the AC/DC ringtone on his phone goes off.

It is a reminder that this is a Forest legend ever in demand, his popularity undiminished. But before he departs he wants to make clear his pride at Forest being back in Europe. “It is a fantastic achievement.” And how fortunate he feels to still be a part of it.

“Whenever I am at a match, I remember that the supporters there are paying lots and lots of money to be there. I would envy my position where I get a bite to eat, watch the football and don’t have to pay to park my car. I realise how lucky I am,” he explains.

“But then, I have always considered myself lucky. I do like to think that I graft hard enough that maybe I deserved that break. I am still conscientious about my job. I get annoyed by some modern things, technology and all that, but I still love all of it.”

No plans for a lie-in, then? To start skipping the early sessions and stop chasing those balls around Forest’s training ground? Absolutely not, he insists. John McGovern plans to continue those training visits. “As long as they are willing to have me,” he adds.