Nottingham Forest amazingly gained automatic promotion to the Championship after beating Yeovil 3-2 and results going the Reds’ way with Cheltenham beating Doncaster 2-1.

A sell-out crowd at the City Ground anticipated a fantastic but nervous day and the match certainly didn’t fail to deliver.

Forest couldn’t have wished for a better start as they stormed into a 1-0 lead. Julian Bennett, who before the game had received his player of the year award, made a Pearce-like challenge on Marvin Williams by taking the ball and man cleanly and left the Yeovil midfielder in a heap on the floor.

He then retrieved the ball and lashed home from all of 25 yards before running to the A-Block kissing the badge on his shirt. It wasn’t long before the Reds made it two.

Brett Ormerod, in what is likely to be his final game in the Garibaldi red, slipped in Kris Commons who beat the offside trap and indeed Steve Mildenhall by squeezing the ball through the former Notts County keeper’s legs and into the Bridgford End net.

With many Tricky Trees still celebrating the second goal, Yeovil grabbed a goal back. Jaime Peters waltzed in between Wes Morgan and Luke Chambers before slotting the ball past Paul Smith. A few fans were beginning to fear the worst after reminiscing to last season in the semi-final of the playoffs where Russell Slade’s side knocked Forest out 5-4 on aggregate after being 2-0 up from the first leg.

There was more reason to cheer quickly though as news came in that Cheltenham had taken the lead against Doncaster. A huge roar went around the City Ground and suddenly everyone started to believe once more.

Lewis McGugan then restored Forest’s two-goal advantage. He curled a wonderful free-kick over the wall and into the net. Without taking anything away from his goal, Mildenhall was awfully placed and made a gap for the youngster to aim for. This meant all three Forest goals had been scored by Nottingham-born lads.

It was almost four by Nottingham-born lads shortly after but Wes Morgan’s header was denied by Mildenhall.

An exciting half came to a close and I for one went for a nice cool beverage to calm the nerves. The second half was a different story and the Forest players understandably became nervous to the fact they were within touching distance of promotion.

Unfortunately, Doncaster did nothing to calm the unease as news filtered through that Doncaster had equalized. One more goal for Donny would mean they would leapfrog Forest and gain the inaugural second place.

James Perch picked up a knock from a superb challenge and was replaced by Junior Agogo. Yeovil then tried to spoil the party further by getting another goal back after Forest were caught napping from a corner and former Northampton striker Andy Kirk scored with his head.

Suddenly the unthinkable happened. After Doncaster had just hit the post to make it 2-1 to them, Cheltenham went down the other end and scored themselves to put them in a fantastic position to stay in League One whilst at the same time enabling Forest to climb out.

MOTM: Julian Bennett