Reporters from across the country flocked to the press box at Wembley Stadium on Sunday afternoon, nestled next to the raucous Nottingham Forest supporters willing on their Reds.
Steve Cooper's men delivered promotion back to the Premier League after 23 years and their success earned plenty of coverage from across the country. The match reports from Sunday will be ones to savour for Forest fans after such a long wait for a return to the promised land.
Below is a look at a selection of match reports from the national media.
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The Guardian
Even Jürgen Klopp made his case for Steve Cooper deserving the award for manager of the season and it is impossible to argue otherwise after Nottingham Forest ended their 23-year exile from the top flight with promotion to the Premier League on Sunday – though not without controversy.
When Cooper took over in September Forest were bottom of the Championship but after an extraordinary run they are back in the big time. The captain, Joe Worrall, led his teammates up the steps to the royal box wearing a bucket hat collected from a supporter en route. Cooper leaned on the steel railings, exhaled deeply and considered what must have been a quite magnificent view, the air a Garibaldi-red haze from the smoke bombs let off in a throbbing Forest end.
The biggest cheer was reserved for Cooper when he held the winners’ trophy aloft and, as his voice cracked and his eyes watered, he described the emotion of the afternoon.
Sky Sports
Nottingham Forest sealed their return to the Premier League after 23 years away thanks to a 1-0 win against Huddersfield at Wembley.
Levi Colwill's own goal after 43 minutes was the difference between the sides in the Championship play-off final on Sunday, meaning Forest will play in the top flight for the first time since 1999.
It completes a remarkable season for Forest, who were bottom of the table after eight games when Steve Cooper took over in late September.
The Independent
Steve Cooper’s remarkable nine-month reinvention of Nottingham Forest gave birth to a belated new era at Wembley on Sunday. After 23 years of chaos, yearning and heartbreak, and a season in which Forest were rock bottom of the Championship in September, their resurrection to the Premier League was rendered complete as Levi Colwill’s cruel own goal settled a tense and scrappy play-off final against Huddersfield.
Carlos Corberan will have every right to feel aggrieved, having seen two credible penalty appeals waved away in a frenzied second half, but fate – and Jon Moss – refused to budge. They are the fine margins worth hundreds of millions in this unique fixture that wagers all the travails of the season on a knife-edge. On this occasion, no matter how Huddersfield tried to wrestle an equaliser, the game seemed destined to tilt in Forest’s favour.
There was ecstasy at last for their players at full-time. Nottingham locals Joe Worrall and Ryan Yates were raised in the shadow of the club’s decline. Others like Brennan Johnson and Djed Spence, who weren’t even born when Forest were last in the Premier League, inherited the burden of that history. But the fans in the stadium knew that pain intimately and immense credit must go to Cooper, twice a loser in the play-offs with Swansea himself, for how he has exorcised those demons against all odds. Forest’s return to the top-flight is a romantic addition long overdue, but that will be no consolation to a Huddersfield squad left splayed across the turf in despair, left to rue what might have been.
The Telegraph
Twenty-three years of hurt are over. Nottingham Forest are finally back in the Premier League after an exile that stretched into the last millennium and, while this was billed as the £195 million match, it is the top flight that will be richer for the return of the team and their fans.
It was a play-off final defeat that consigned Huddersfield Town, whose revival this season has been almost as extraordinary, to another campaign in the Championship. They will rightly feel aggrieved that, after dominating the second half, they were denied at least one and probably two penalties that could have changed everything. To rub salt in Huddersfield wounds, the only goal was an own goal.
This was a less than glorious way for Jon Moss to end his refereeing career at the age of 51, and not least because of how much his decisions mattered. The first denial, which led to a booking for Harry Toffolo, who was deemed to have dived when Jack Colback stuck out a foot to halt him, was upheld despite a Var check.
Daily Mail
Far have they travelled and much have they seen, and perhaps Nottingham Forest have served their time in the footballing doldrums and deserved their good fortune. It certainly felt hard to begrudge any of the wild celebrations at the end of a long exile from the Premier League.
Forest overcame Huddersfield at Wembley Stadium thanks to an own goal by teenage defender Levi Colwill and a generous oversight or two by the officials.
Steve Cooper's team did not perform particularly well. They were far from fluent. They were out-played for most of the second half and they survived two strong penalty appeals as nerves frazzled in the closing stages.
