Footage of striker Danny Forrest’s wonder strike from the halfway line against Harrogate Railway in last Tuesday’s West Riding County Cup game has notched up over 100,000 hits since being posted on YouTube. In case you’ve not already seen it, go here
The striker also featured in Matt Badcock’s column in Sunday’s Non-League Paper, the text of which is reproduced below:
Long-shot won’t make me a new Beckham!
“I MAY have scored an injury-time winner from halfway on Tuesday night, but I’m not sure I’ll be called Guiseley’s David Beckham anytime soon. We were playing Harrogate RA in the County Cup and it looked like extra time when they equalized.
Someone asked the ref how long was left and he said, ‘Just 30 seconds’. We’ve got big games coming up in the league, as well as FC United in the FA Trophy, so I was desperate to get the game done in 90 minutes. I told Lee Ellington to knock the ball in front of me from the kick-off because I was going for it. I caught it perfectly. It seemed to take forever to reach, but in it went.
Joining Guiseley in the summer has worked out brilliantly. I’m from the area and when I was growing up, if Bradford’ City weren’t at home, my dad would take me down to the see the Lions. For the last ten years I’ve been a pro footballer. Going part-time was a big decision. But it’s given me the chance to look at other things – I’ve set up my own football school for kids in Salford and I’m training to be a teacher. Football means everything to me and if I got the chance to return to full-time I would but I’ve got back to enjoying playing for what it is.
Barrow released me in the summer and for a couple of months it was difficult weighing up what to do. The chance to come to Guiseley was a good one. I was here on loan last season so knew what a good club it is. We are well looked after and never want for anything. Manager Steve Kittrick has been fantastic especially when the boys were in the play-offs last year.
I’d returned to Barrow for the last few weeks of the season, but Kitts invited me to join them. I stayed overnight with the players before the Boston game and for the final sat on the bench with the team. Although I couldn’t play it was nice to be a part of it.
It was heartbreaking for the lads to miss promotion after Telford won in injury time. But everyone is over that and once again we’ve put ourselves in the race.
We were third before yesterday’s game with Workington and playing well. The gaffer really encourages us. I’ve played in a lot of teams where you play a bit like robots. Here it’s not like that. He wants us to express ourselves. There is no whacking it into corners. Tuesday is probably the only time I have whacked the ball from halfway – and it still seems surreal!”
Reproduced from the Non-League Paper Sunday 04 December 2011