For several thousand people the sacking of a man at Christmas will be one of the best-received festive treats.
It is a touch macabre. But it might just save Forest’s season.
Like a lot of people I was very much looking forward to the Boxing Day football. A crisp, dry afternoon, a packed stadium and hopefully three very important points to compound the festive cheer.
What actually happened this afternoon will probably have shocked even the most ardent doomsayers.
A Forest side devoid of any shape or direction delivered one of the worst performances in living memory.
Today’s debacle will take a merited position on the dusty top shelf, alongside seedy packages like Coventry in 2005, Plymouth a week later, and Woking under Megson.
It is simply impossible to overstate how appalling it was. There was a quality of confusion and lethargy so overbearing that it turned people against their own team.
Forest were roundly booed off the pitch, and then venomously booed back on to it.
Literally hundreds left at half time, thousands more followed after goal number four.
I had a genuine feeling that a lot of the people remaining, certain in their desire to see Calderwood axed, were willing Doncaster to score more and make sure of his exit.
These are people that slap down hundreds of pounds a season and, in some cases, travel across the country to see Forest play. To conjure these sentiments in people so fanatical is a fitting example of how severe this afternoon was.
Robert Earnshaw diplomatically rescued his admission that the players didn’t know what they were doing today, but there was evidence enough in the performance.
The first half was played out with a petulance and a laziness that is almost beyond description.
Doncaster waltzed into a substantial lead and Forest served up nothing more than childish frustration; the sulky air of ill-fated complacency.
Calderwood’s head must have exploded at half-time because what happened next was frankly bizarre, even by his standards.
I have never been so convinced that the team had no formation whatsoever. Literally no instructions.
It was a mess – players running in packs like boys around a schoolyard; little Arron Davies hiding behind the dinner lady.
That we scored two goals is testament to Doncaster’s incredible relaxation. No doubt their training sessions are harder.
For Calderwood to speak of the ‘comeback’ as encouraging and to play the ten man card at the top of his interview is a fitting example of his desperation.
I am not sorry to see him go, in fact I am enthused almost to the point of forgetting the preceding horror show.
This is a triumphant goodbye to right wingers on the left and left wingers on the right, to imaginary formations, to lumbering centre forwards in impossible roles on the wing, to the irksome post-match soundbites in which words are drawled but literally no information is imparted…
This is a day I would have welcomed at any point over the last two and a half years.
An inoffensive character who did his best to pander to our airs and graces, but he was always a few steps behind what we were looking for.
Needless to say the next appointment is crucial – in no small way it will shape the entire future of the club.
When Hart was chopped the club was reportedly besieged with applications from across the globe.
Let us hope this will be the case once more, because it might just be the last chance for those replica European Cups to have any pulling power at all.
