Pat Jennings has revealed he still has the dart that a football thug injured him with nearly 45 years ago.
The legendary Northern Ireland goalkeeper was struck by the missile thrown by a Nottingham Forest ‘fan’ during a match in the late 1970s and required medical treatment at half time.
Big Pat, now 79, told this newspaper: “It’s something I’ll never forget, and I still have that dart.
“I was playing for Arsenal at Forest’s City ground when the dart came over the top of the crossbar and embedded itself in my arm.
“I pulled it out and put it in my goalkeeper cap at the back of the goal.”
He added: “At half time, I pulled up my sleeve and my arm was covered in blood. The Arsenal physio had to treat me before I went back out.”
Pat recalled that Gunners coach Don Howe was furious about his keeper being struck by such a dangerous instrument and bellowed at Forest manager Brian Clough: ‘This is absolutely outrageous. Your fans are a disgrace, they’re animals — look what they’ve done to my goalkeeper.”
The errant fan was later banned from the City Ground for life and fined — and the policeman who attempted to take the dart as a memento for himself was caught in the act by Pat.
He said: “I looked round about five minutes after being hit and there was a policeman going through my stuff for the dart. I shouted at him, ‘Leave that for my collection…’ and, four decades later, I still have it.”
Newry man Pat, who won 119 Northern Ireland caps and played in over 1,000 games, including the 1982 and 1986 World Cups, also kept a remarkable letter Clough sent him a couple of days after the dart incident.
The letter, on Nottingham Forest Football Club headed note paper, said: ‘Dear Pat, I have absolutely no sympathy for you in view of the fact that every time you come to the City Ground you stop everything that comes in your direction, so it’s of no surprise to me that you stopped a dart on this occasion’.
Pat added: “It was signed at the bottom: ‘Look after yourself, lots of love, Brian’.
“That was so typical of Clough.”
The attack on Pat, which took place on December 1, 1979, led to a Football Association disciplinary committee investigation.
This resulted in Forest being threatened with ground closure should such a serious incident ever happen again.
As Sir Arthur South, vice-president of the Football League at the time, said: “Society has a responsibility to ensure that people don’t want to come to football grounds to fight and throw things.”
Pat’s English odyssey began in 1963 when he signed for Watford as a 17-year-old.
He later joined Tottenham where he spent 13 years, winning the FA Cup in 1967, League Cup in 1971 and 1973 and the Uefa Cup in 1972.
He then moved to north London rivals Arsenal, helping them to win a dramatic 1979 FA Cup final against Manchester United — a few months before the dart incident.