There are two ways of winning football matches. One is to outplay and outperform the opposition. The other, when they have an abundance of class within the team, is to battle and fight and win the right to play your own game. It was the latter last night at the Banks’s Stadium as, in a classic game of two halves, Walsall withstood the classy play of their opponents in the first half, then took the game by the scruff of the neck in the second. By the end, Forest were showing signs of “not liking it up ‘em”.

Forest were the better team in the first half, as the makeshift Walsall central midfield had trouble coping. Forest had two attacking central midfielders who were taking it in turns to move into the “hole” and that was giving Wrack and Bradley real problems. The result was that Forest carved out three golden opportunities, only to see them wasted by Tyson (twice, once with a header and once with his left foot on the near post) and once by the normally dangerous Commons, who also put a header wide. However, The Saddlers were also making shooting opportunities and only some wayward finishing from Wrack, Sweeney and Mooney prevented the Saddlers from testing the keeper, while Wilson produced possibly the best piece of defending of the night to nick the ball away from Ricketts when he looked as if he’d been put through by Mooney.

Ricketts made up for that within a minute or so of the restart, however, as Sammy Clingan, the former Dingle, miss timed a back header. Ricketts ran onto it, held off the defender superbly, and smashed the ball home off ‘keeper Smith’s body.

From that point on, despite the pressure that Forest tried to exert, and despite the changes made by them, Walsall always had the edge. More to the point, as Forest gambled more, the Saddlers always looked the more likely to score. Only some last ditch tackling and interceptions from Forest prevented the lead being doubled.

Forest attempted to throw the kitchen sink at Walsall as the half went on, but the Saddlers defended superbly from the front and knocked their opponents out of their stride time and time again, even Ricketts tracking back and getting tackles in – something he didn’t do when he was 20! The spirit within the side was summed up by one superb run towards the end from Danny Fox, at the end of which he was within a whisker of putting Ricketts in on goal, all while he was playing with a heavily bandaged head, following a collision with Scott Dann.

Ricketts almost had the final word when he put a free kick desperately narrowly wide, having bent it around the “wrong” end of the wall, then had a goal chalked off by the linesman for offside (the crowd wrongly concluding it was for a non existent foul on the goalkeeper).

The crowd erupted at the final whistle at a performance which can be summed up by the fact that, despite the quality of the opponents, Ince did not have to make a single save in the entire game.

Man of the Match went to Anthony Gerrard and it’s difficult to disagree, but Weston, Fox and Ricketts must have been very, very close behind him.