I hardly know where to begin. A match that had everything - except any decent football. Red cards, yellow cards, fisticuffs, in-fighting, bad sportsmanship, cheating and police involvement. And that was only the first half. And the second? A complete damp squib as both sides appeared not to want to be there.
The start was indeed explosive. A seemingly inoccuous challenge sent Akinbayi completely barking. Vaughan challenged Thuginbayi out near the touchline, conceded the free kick and jogged back into the box to defend the kick. Nutinbayi followed, and as their paths crossed all hell broke loose. A couple of silly pushes were followed by a few daft slaps - all handbags really - and then BANG! - Scumbaginbayi dropped the head on Vaughan who went down like a sack of spuds.
The game was stopped for 5 minutes as the ref consulted his linesman before showing Tysoninbayi the red card. But that wasn't the end. Somehow the ref decided that Vaughan was guilty of getting his face in the way of Animalinbayi's head, and he was off too!! But it didn't end there either. Headcaseinbayi was now fighting with his own Captain and refusing to go. As Curle tried to force his striker off he received an elbow to the face for his trouble as Akinbayi blew another fuse.
Anyway, after he finally left it immediately got worse for Forest as they conceded the opening goal from the free kick. Bazeley fired in the cross, it was headed back across goal by a Forest defender and fell to Pollet who headed it past a static Beasant.
Feelings were running high and it looked as if Forest had already lost their heads as the tackles were flying in.
After 20 minutes the game as a contest was all but over as Wolves went two ahead, and what a quality finish it was.Bazeley collected the ball, was given time to turn and put it on his left foot, and curled an absolute beauty past Beasant and into the corner.
But if we thought the excitement was over we were wrong. Very wrong. Louis-Jean almost took both legs off the body of Emblem, and whilst two Wolves players were stretched out on the floor, Beasant sportingly kicked the ball for touch to allow them to receive treatment. However, before the ball reached the touchline it was intercepted by Branch, who raced towards goal. Beasant could hardly believe what he was seeing as Branch swept the ball into the back of the net for number three. As Branch turned away to celebrate he looked a little surprised that no-one seemed to be sharing his joy!
Lurch ran fully 50 yards to vent his feelings before every other player on the park got involved and even David Platt lost his composure to jump into the Wolves dug-out and wade into Colin Lee.
Yellow cards followed in quick succession for Prutton, Louis-Jean and Rogers and on the stroke of half time it was bye-bye Prutton as a trip earned him a second yellow card and an early bath.
The local plod visited the dressing rooms of both sides at half time and warned everyone to calm things down or face the consequences. The message obviously got home, because both sides treated the second period as nothing more than an exercise in killing time.
So back tto the drawing board, but with consecutive Home games against Swindon and Norwich to come in the next week, we should recover nicely.
