Forza Garibaldi in 2018/2019

In our last website piece, The Summer of Our Content, we wrote about the spring of positivity that has flowed throughout the summer. As always it’s a fragile harmony that exists and one that will inevitably take a knock should we lose in Bristol this weekend.

Here, we wanted to let those of you who are interested know about where we think we fit in to what is hopefully an exciting season…

Pre-Match Gatherings

After our flirtation with the now defunct Garibaldi Bar we have returned to our previous nomadic existence, stumbling around various venues throughout the course of the season. Some of these, you will notice, are starting to become an annual thing. We’ll be back at the Trent Navigation for another big outdoor pre-match on 25th August before the tea-time K.O against Birmingham. And the Bierkeller, which so many of you have been asking us about, will host us again on October 20th prior to the Norwich fixture.

Sandwiched between them will be the boats on 22nd September on the same day at the Rotherham match. We are at five boats so far holding 300 fans, all of which sold out ridiculously quickly. In the unlikely event that more boats or more spaces come available we’ll let you know.

Away from home we’ll try and help arrange a few get togethers too.

NFFC Fantasy Football Competition

We are going to be launching a new competition based around the normal fantasy football format. The difference being that this will be Forest specific. Entrants will select six players and they will be awarded points against a set criteria – appearance, goal, clean sheet etc.

We will initially run this on an occasional basis this season and see how it goes. It will largely coincide with the pre-match gatherings in order for us to maximise the number of entries but we may open it up online if demand is there.

The final rules are still being formulated but there will be a small fee to enter and the winner will receive a cash prize each time. The FG fund will also benefit from a share of the take.

We aim to pilot this at the Trent Navigation before the Birmingham game and will announce the details before then.

Displays

Undoubtedly the most common question we receive! ‘When’s the next display?’

Chances are we aren’t going to tell you. We like to keep you guessing and, deep down, we know you love the anticipation!

To avoid any disappointment let us just clarify that there will be no display immediately this season. This mainly due to time but there are other reasons too. We don’t want you turning up to the West Brom or Reading game and expecting to see something. But rest assured something will happen eventually. And it’ll make you happy we think. The nice thing about this season is we have a bit more of a plan and we are looking ahead.

We’ve also been drumming up help. Some of you have spoken to us directly about lending a hand and that is great. Needless to say those who are keen to help will have your hand snapped at.

Thanks too to everyone who has helped us financially by purchasing something from the site store, acquiring a boat ticket or participating in this summer’s football tournament. Special, special thanks to Rich Fisher who recently donated £400 to our campaign from sales of his book The Church of Stuart Pearce and other stories. These displays don’t happen without the generosity of our fellow supporters and we are always humbled by it.

1978-1980 – 40th Anniversary

We really want to make sure this anniversary doesn’t pass us by and so we’ll be doing a few bits to mark 40 years since the European Cup winning campaigns of 1979 & 1980.

The piece we did talking to fans about the day the league was won at Coventry seemed to be popular and we’ll look to do a few more along a similar theme perhaps.

One bit of news is that we are imminently going to be launching a new Twitter feed which will live tweet events from 1978-1980 as if they are happening in present day. We’ve teamed up with our pals at Bandy & Shinty and we are all pretty excited about it. It’ll hopefully be interesting and a bit of fun. Details will be posted up soon and we’d love for you to give it a follow.

Website Content

The website has been a very useful tool over the last twelve months and we’d like to get more use out of it. We’ll try our best to keep churning out a fairly regular stream of mildly interesting content. This, we hope, will include some new contributors from the fanbase.

One new feature is going to be a Q&A with an opposing fan ahead of every away game. This should offer a bit of insight from their view and also serve as a bit of a guide for any travelling Forest fans. Providing we can get someone to talk to us each time we hope to do this for every away game over the course of the season.

 

 

See you all soon.