Joe Worrall was once a ball boy at Nottingham Forest. He was, in his own words, enthralled by the spit and sweat of the professional game.
‘It’s OK sitting up in the stands enclosed with other people,’ Worrall recalls. ‘But when it’s just you down there on a stool in your coat, it gives you a totally new perspective of what it’s actually like. It fuelled my fire. I was like, “Wow, yeah. This is what I want to do”.
‘Sometimes, if you were really lucky, you even got a towel to wipe the ball down…’
More than a decade and 200 league appearances later, Worrall now knows what it’s actually like and he’s addicted to it. He’s the Nottingham Forest captain.
Born down the road in Hucknall, he is one of two arteries of local blood that run through Steve Cooper’s multinational squad. The other is his friend, the midfielder Ryan Yates. ‘I know this city and this club,’ he says. ‘I know the responsibility that a Forest player should feel. The history, the two stars (for two European Cups) above the badge. That means something.
Joe Worrall has made more than 200 appearances for Nottingham Forest and is club captain
Worrall’s uncle, Police Sergeant Graham Saville (right), was tragically killed in August while helping a man in distress
Forest’s players observe a minute’s applause in memory of Saville before a game in August
‘All you have to do is walk in here to know it’s special. You will only get the most out of it, though, if you get fully on board, soak it up and understand it.’
Sitting at Forest’s training centre about a mile from the City Ground, I tell Worrall about an encounter with an elderly season ticket holder last year. He talked up the importance of local players.
‘You must have found one of the few members of the Worrall and Yates fan club,’ the 26-year-old smiles. ‘I say that tongue in cheek. It makes me smile. I am so lucky but at the same time you are very aware that when you are local you are the first one to cop it if you make a mistake. Your head is on the block first.
‘I would be exactly the same. If I was a fan and Yatesy was leading the team out and he made a slip-up, I’d be like, “Flipping heck, how many chances is he gonna get?”.
‘It’s like how you speak to your little brother. You are firm and hard on them but you love them more than anything in the world, don’t you?’
Worrall knows all about love. Close at home and in its broader context. In late August, two days before Forest played a Premier League game at Manchester United, his uncle — Sergeant Graham Saville of Nottinghamshire Police — was struck by a train while helping a man in distress. Several days later, the father-of-two died.
Worrall led his team out that day at Old Trafford and, following his uncle’s death, he did it again at Chelsea. The ovation he received from Forest supporters has stayed with him.
‘There was a lot of emotion,’ says Worrall, holding tightly to the arm of his chair. ‘When the fans were singing at the end… well… in the grand scheme of things all it was, I suppose, was a clap. But it meant so much to me and my family.
‘I have been here for so many years. I have earned my stripes. I guess I am just trying to look forward. But for me at the end of that game… to get that… well…’
Sgt Saville and his family lived round the corner from Worrall and his girlfriend Ellie. This story, he insists, is not about him.
‘I have had loads of supportive messages from within football but for me it’s about my aunty and the kids,’ he explains. ‘All I can do is pass them on. It does show what the football community can do. We know how easily they can knock you down but look at how nice they can be also.
‘Anybody with a heart would do the same, wouldn’t they? If someone has lost someone they would look out for them and care for them, wouldn’t they? It’s hard to know what to say but I have been really touched by it and so has the family. The support has been overwhelming.
‘It still feels surreal, if I am honest. We haven’t had the funeral yet. He was such a good and nice bloke. He was massive, 6ft 6in. Useless at football and not much interest either. But my cousin Stanley is a goalkeeper and he would help out at training. He wanted to be involved. Typical of him.
‘They had just bought the house near us. We had started to see each other more. And now this. I just feel so much for them. It just shows you never know when it may be the last time you see someone.’
Worrall’s own coping mechanisms have been simple. Train and play. He does not apologise for that and says there wasn’t even a conversation with Cooper about standing aside.
‘It’s not just me,’ he explains. ‘Anybody who has lost someone knows it’s helpful to have something to focus on, to take your mind off it all for a time. For me that has been football. The manager has spoken about that. He was excellent when it happened and still is.
‘I can’t actually remember what Steve said to me but we never had the conversation about playing or not playing. If you are grieving you are entitled to time off work. Of course you are. But I don’t know. For me I felt I should crack on. My job is to play football.’
Worrall is easy company. A straight up and down bloke, the kind you would want sitting next to you in a dressing room. He’s funny, too, and unusually inquisitive.
His pathway to the Forest team was not easy. Recommended to the club’s academy as a kid by former captain Steve Chettle, he was knocked back. A year or so later, Chettle sent him back again. This time, he was invited to stay.
His debut, in 2016, came only after he knocked on the door of manager Philippe Montanier during a Forest losing streak.
Worrall’s own coping mechanisms to deal with the tragedy have been simple. Train and play.
‘I just asked him if I could play,’ he smiles. ‘I couldn’t believe it when he just said “yes”. It was crazy, really. I was just trying it on as I thought I was worth a go.’
Worrall’s style of defending is straightforward. Previously he has said he had a fetish for heading.
‘I was fortunate to have the guiding hand of good coaches here,’ he says. ‘They were all different in how they wanted to play but they all wanted a hard-working, honest, steely, heart-on-his-sleeve centre half. That’s what I pride myself on being.
‘People talk about John Stones. Fantastic. The best since Rio Ferdinand and John Terry. And now he plays midfield and I think, “I can’t do that”.
‘But my bread and butter is I wanna stop the ball going in the net. People talk about passing accuracy but my stats are OK. I have worked on that. I have improved even though I am not the finished article. But I want to be aerially dominant and strong in the tackle and just aggressive.
‘The game has changed and I am OK with that. Protection for players is important. The game is even quicker now. Rashford, Saka. Unbelievable. And tackling is simple. You just have to get the ball and get it clean, yeah?
‘When you first come through and are asked to train with the first team, you wanna make an impression and put a foot in. That was me. But nowadays you don’t want to hurt your team-mates.
‘When I came through you tackled firm and hard because you wanted to earn your stripes. That’s been taken from the game and that’s a shame. That’s what got me in the team, putting my head in among the boots. Dexter Blackstock was our striker back then and I would thump him about and he would leave his elbow in. There is none of that any more. The rules haven’t changed much but the way players are looked after has.
‘Defending and blocking looks simple but a lot of hard work goes on. Winning matches always starts with bricks and mortar, your defence and your goalkeeper. It gives you that solid platform to create stuff. We leave that to the guys who are paid the most and who score the goals and grab the headlines. But that’s OK by us at the back as that means we get the success as well…’
Worrall signed a new three-year contract last month but knows that guarantees him nothing. Currently, he is not in Cooper’s starting XI. The frustration of that is written across his face.
‘You have no divine right to play whether you are captain or have been brought in for £40million like Morgan (Gibbs-White) was,’ he says. ‘The last game he was sat next to me on the bench. I used to switch off at night. I don’t any more. It’s about what is next. I have done first gear and have done second gear but you don’t get in to third gear and stop, do you?
Worrall captained his hometown club to promotion from the Championship back in 2021-22
He also realises he isn’t guaranteed a place in Steve Cooper’s side despite signing a new deal
‘Last year I was out of the team for a while and was searching for reasons why. We weren’t winning but still I wasn’t playing. But now I understand I probably wasn’t doing everything right. I wasn’t doing everything a Premier League captain should be. I’m not talking about naughty stuff but in terms of representing the club right, working hard. Those things I have done all my life to get here. Maybe I took my foot off the gas.
‘There was a reason why some players were playing and I wasn’t and it hurt me. Ultimately we are playing football. With what happened to my uncle Graham, football’s really so irrelevant, isn’t it? But to me it also means so much.
‘Sometimes I can come across as blunt, single-minded and selfish. Which I am, in a way. But at the same time I just wanna work hard and milk every single ounce of what I have in me.
‘I look at fantastic individual players, talented, been there and done it, internationals. I think, “Why can’t that be me?”. I have that in my mind. Even my mates laugh at me but I think, “F*** it. Why not?”.’