Nicky Forster opens up on Reading FC career and reaction to season-ending injury: ‘No, I’m not going to accept that.’

With the score level at 1-1, up steps Jamie Cureton with the chance to send Reading to the final in Cardiff. Scorer of 29 goals, this wasn’t to be number 30. Lacking the power to beat Roy Carroll in the Wigan goal, Cureton’s penalty is pushed back into play where Forster arrives clinically to send the Madejski Stadium into raptures.

It’s a moment that no Reading fan in attendance nor Forster himself will ever forget. But it probably shouldn’t have happened at all. At least that’s what Forster was told. 

The Royals legend takes a moment to compose himself before recalling the dark day in his 20-year career when he was summoned by manager Alan Pardew after suffering an injury in preseason.

“It was devastating. I remember being called into see Pards in his office, Kevin Dillon was there, Niall Clark was there, John Fern was there - the physio who’s now at Chelsea - and Martin Allen was there. And he told me the news.

“‘Foz, the scan has come back, you’ve snapped your cruciate. You won’t play a game this season.’

Forster cutting a frustrated figure. Image by: PA

“A wave of emotion came over me and I nearly burst out crying. But I remember thinking ‘no, I’m not going to accept that.’ So I said to him ‘Pards, I definitely will play again this season, and I’ll have a contribution to make.’ 

“And with that I got up, left the office, and planned my rehab, planned the operation date, then started working and slowly got myself back. And at the end of the season it was the massive game against Wigan which I think goes down as the second-best game in Reading’s history, only second to the day they got promoted to the Premier League. 

“So I was delighted to be instrumental and involved in that. It was the end of a really long, not only a long physical campaign or challenge, but also very emotional. Because to do all of preseason and then to injure myself and the extent of the injury, a serious one, a cruciate reconstruction, so it was a tough mental challenge as well.”

These days Nicky Forster coaches people; talking with business executives, athletes, and anyone else who needs it about the power of positive thinking and goal-setting. 

“That is my passion,” he explains. “That’s what my joy always was as a player. There are lots of lessons that do cross the divide between the world of professional sport and business and personal development.”

Just a few minutes in the company of the former Reading striker, feeding off his amplifying energy tells you exactly why that’s his calling.

Or you can just re-read the story above.

Nicky Forster wheels away in celebration of his iconic strike against Wigan. Image by: PA

The long path that took Forster from the sidelines to heroic playoff super-sub is in some ways a microcosm of the journey that brought the striker to Berkshire in the first place: a twisting and often treacherous trail that would have seen most fail. 

“I never had a vision that I would be a professional footballer at all,” he says. “I look back now and again and the story is just unbelievable.

“I was in the youth team at a club called Horley Town and we were offered to come and watch the first team play on the Tuesday in a preseason friendly against Gillingham. The manager said ‘look, if any of you youngsters want to play, we’ll play the first team in the first half and then you youngsters can come on and play in the second half.’ And no one put their hand up! 

“In the end, I put my hand up and said ‘I’ll have a game, why not?’ I did okay, I didn’t do particularly great I didn’t think, but someone saw something in me and Gillingham took me on for a trial. And from that point it escalated into a 20-year career! Had I not taken myself out of my comfort zone, I would not be speaking to you today and I would not have had the career that I had.

"Life sometimes is about taking yourself out of your comfort zone, taking opportunities when they come, and there’s no doubt about it, luck got me into that position and then a lot of sacrifice, a lot of hard work, continued and got me the career that I had.

“If someone said to me, ‘sum yourself up in three words as a player’ it would be greedy, quick, and...industrious, I worked hard. There were so many players with more technical ability, more tactical knowledge than I had but I certainly worked hard, I was greedy, and quick.”

Non-league roots had an undeniable impact on Forster, helping to forge the player he became on the pitch as well as the person that enabled the player to succeed. 

“I think it shaped me a lot and certainly those attributes we spoke of: industrious,” Forster says of his football beginnings. “I used to get chances and I used to carve out opportunities for myself just by chasing down, putting defenders under pressure, forcing them to make mistakes, stealing the ball off them. And I think that comes about because of my origins. 

“I didn’t have a grounding through an academy or a centre of excellence. I was never linked to a club. And as a result I didn’t get some of the basics put into me that some of these youngsters do.

"Certainly my first touch wasn’t as good as a lot of the other players, my tactical sense wasn’t as good, my technical ability wasn’t as good. And I had to really work hard at that and over the course of my career I got better at it. But I had to make up for it in other areas. Being industrious, my speed was always my main asset, and I was greedy. 

“If you look at what I achieved with those three attributes, to get over 700 games - a lot of people don’t get near 700 games. Over 200 goals is deemed to be a really good target so to score 200-something goals, 700-something games, I’m incredibly proud of those statistics.”

While Forster wouldn’t have thought his hugely prosperous career possible when he started out at Horley Town in the ninth tier of the football pyramid, his mentality was always that of a striker chasing down a defender; forcing the issue. The door barely has to open for Forster to smash it down.

After taking his chance on trial at Gillingham, Forster displayed the trait that would come to define his career: putting the ball in the back of the net. In his second season at Priestfield Stadium he notched 18 goals, earning a move to Second Division Brentford where he continued to excel.

His impressive form in west London convinced Birmingham to take a chance on the former non-league forward but two-and-a-half seasons in the Midlands yielded limited game-time and just 12 goals in 76 games.

Nicky Forster during his spell at Birmingham. Image by: PA

Forster knew his career was delicately poised at a crucial crossroads. At 26 years old, his next move would lay the foundation for the prime years of his career. And when David Moyes came calling, he set off for Preston.

“I knew I wanted to leave Birmingham because I wasn’t getting enough playing time. I signed for Birmingham and within three games of signing I got a long-term knee injury and I was out for about seven months. And when I came back from my injury there were a number of players above me in the pecking order and my time on the pitch was limited. So I knew I wanted to leave Birmingham and Preston came in for me. 

“I went up and spoke to them, David Moyes who’s doing so well at West Ham, he was the manager at the time. I spoke to him, I looked around the club, I looked around the area and I was pretty happy with it all. 

"It was a Friday afternoon and I said ‘look, give me the weekend and I’ll go home, think about it, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be coming up on Monday to sign.’ 

“So I went home, and on our way down the M40, we got a call. From Reading. ‘Can you come in and see us? Can you come in and talk to us?’ We swung into Reading, spoke with Tommy Burns, the late Tommy Burns at Reading, and something about the vision, something about the place…I just felt immediately at home. I mulled it over for 24 hours and made my decision pretty quickly. I made the call to David Moyes that I’d changed my mind. And that was it.

“I made the decision and it was a great decision. David Moyes didn’t think so! I’ve seen David Moyes several times since and he’s never really said hello to me. So I don’t know...maybe he was a bit disappointed!”

The rest, as we now know, is history. Forster went on to make 215 appearances, scoring 67 goals at the Madejski Stadium, including his aformentioned iconic effort against Wigan. His spell at the club helped lay the foundation for the most prosperous years in modern Royals’ history. 

But the way it began, one would be forgiven for thinking that success was nothing more than a pipe dream.

11 matches into his Reading career, Forster had only been on the winning side twice as the manager who brought him to the club, Tommy Burns lost his job in mid-September. While Forster had signed to play for Burns, the quick pivot proved instrumental in everything that came next.

A solid if unspectacular midfielder in his days at Charlton Athletic and Crystal Palace, Alan Pardew followed Terry Bullivant to Reading in 1997 as reserve team coach. When Bullivant’s replacement, Burns, was sacked with the club slipping towards the relegation zone, it was Pardew who stepped up as interim manager.

Pardew watches over his Reading team. Image by: JasonPIX

“Some of the players had the mentality of older players," Forster says. "There was a drinking culture when I got there, Tommy Burns was trying to cover every aspect from the way the players lived, the way the players ate, the way they slept. And then on the field it was just an overload of information that the players couldn’t buy into. And it resulted in us not having a clear idea of what Tommy wanted us to do. So unfortunately Tommy lost his job and Alan Pardew came in. 

“Pardew simplified the game. Anyone who says to me; who are the best managers you’ve worked under? It’s very simple, I can name them straight away. It’s Alan Pardew, Steve Coppell, and Gus Poyet. Why? Because they simplified the game. They gave us the ability to make our own decisions, but we did have a framework in how they wanted us to play. 

“Alan Pardew wanted us to play on the front foot, he wanted us to play progressive football, he wanted us to pass forward, run forward, drive forward, crosses in the box and let’s get at them. And we used to, in that period when we were doing really well under Pards, we’d hit teams on the break so quickly, we were devastating at times."

With Pardew at the helm, Reading dragged themselves out of any potential relegation battle, eventually finishing 10th as they lost just four of their final 20 games. 

Under Pardew, the culture on the pitch changed for the better but it was only made possible by the cultural switch behind closed doors in the private rooms at Reading’s training ground.

“He brought in Martin Allen and together they just changed the culture. It took a little while, like it does to change any culture in any sort of organization, but they changed the culture of the way we looked at things - not just on the pitch, but off the pitch as well. It was a hugely pivotal time in Reading’s history.

“One of my roles now as I came out of football is I coach people, I coach athletes, I coach people in businesses, professionals, sporting individuals, and I set goals with them. And under Pardew, Niall Calrk, and Martin Allen, that was my first real strong introduction to setting goals in a sporting environment, in a business environment. 

“We used to have meetings once a month, once every six games, and as a group we would decide on what was a realistic target in terms of points, in terms of goals, in terms of clean sheets from the next batch of six games. And it was really really important, really powerful stuff. It gave us a focus. Because 46 games, a season of 46 games is such a long time to focus on. 

“Just the weather alone from August through to May you go from beautiful sun and hard pitches to driving rain and sodden pitches and back to hard pitches and beautiful sun. It’s really hard to focus on a full season and Pardew did much more than come in and buy players or tinkered with the system, he fundamentally changed the club from the ground up.

"The margins between success and failure become smaller and smaller and that’s why we get a lot of very tight games where teams cancel each other out. So that ethos, that vision, that culture that you have is vitally important. It does lead to extra points and that’s what sometimes makes the difference between promotion and not."

Reading assistant manager under Alan Pardew, Martin Allen. Image by: PA

Forster ended his first season in Berkshire with ten goals and confidence in both the striker and the club flowed as they headed into the 2000/01 campaign. But with the new season just weeks away, Forster suffered the injury that would derail his entire campaign.

By the time he came back for the final months of the season, defying the doctors and his manager, Reading were in the thick of the promotion race. With time running short on the last day of the campaign and the Bournemouth leading 3-2 at the Madejski, Forster came off the bench and popped up at the back post to equalise.

Reading’s place in the playoffs was already confirmed pre-kick off and it’s easy to overlook this particular dramatic strike of Forster’s when you think about what came just a few weeks later. But it’s a moment that will always hold a special place whenever Forster contemplates his career.

The moment marked the culmination of something bigger than football - the culmination of a triumph of human will. He was told it wasn’t possible, he was told it wouldn’t happen. But if Forster just accepted what was ‘supposed to happen’, he wouldn’t have reached Reading in the first place. 

“That (goal against Wigan) was a great moment and I could really enjoy it but the moment that was really emotional was when I socred my first goal back. The wave of emotion came then.

"I remember scoring and celebrating and then I got into the changing room and I don’t know why it came at that time. Often you don’t know when a wave of emotion is going to hit you and it just woah, bang, hit me.

"I welled up and was like ‘you know what, everything I’ve been through, and me telling Pards that I will be a part of this season, it all just released.’ I’d kept it bottled up and fought it and it all just released in that moment. It was really emotional.

“My lad Jake (Forster-Caskey) has just had it recently. In the second-to-last game of the season he damaged his knee and in the last game his teammates all came out with t-shirts with his number and his name. And that’s a really fitting tribute. And I had everyone come around and pat me on the back that day when I finally came back and scored. I think that was probably it. When your peers give you acknowledgement, sometimes the simplest gesture that says ‘well done’...that can be the trigger and it probably was.

“They see what you’ve been through. They see you training every day on the side, away from the rest of the group. They see you in all weathers, wind, rain, snow, bright sunshine, running up and down trying to get fit. And at the end of the week you don’t have that game to play. There’s not that carrot, there’s not that reward.

"We used to train every day for a reason, which was to play at the end of the week! You go out in front of a crowd and when you score...you get that incredible spike of dopamine. But you don’t get that when you’re injured, you don’t have that reward at the end of the week.

“The goal itself and the Wigan game was emotional in terms of exhilarating, but...I didn’t sort of well up in that moment, I was just riding the top of a massive wave.”

11 days after the Bournemouth draw, Forster’s iconic moment arrived as Wigan were vanquished, sending Reading to Wembley and the Royals in the Madejski Stadium darting onto the pitch in mass celebration.

“Super-charged night in terms of the action on the pitch - although it was all compressed into a three-minute period at the end," Forster recalls. "The atmosphere was charged and also the elements…the weather that night - the mist and fog came over the pitch and the visibility within the stadium was really poor. That just added to an amazing overall atmosphere.

"Just incredible, absolutely incredible. I’ll never forget it.”

Part Two of the Chronicle's conversation with Nicky Forster will be out tomorrow (Sunday) where we discuss play-off heartbreak, promotion and life after football...