Laurie Cunningham, then at West Brom and later of Real Madrid, had been the first black player capped at under-21 level, but it was Anderson who, in his own words, “broke the mould” by making it into the side for a full international.
“There was talk in the papers about whether it was going to be me or Laurie, but there was no rivalry between us at all,” he explains.
“It was whoever gets the nod first, good luck to them. It just happened to be me.”
In the stands at Wembley that night was Anderson’s father, Audley, who had left Jamaica with wife Myrtle in the 1950s, just two of the estimated half a million people waving goodbye to the Caribbean and determined to make a new home in Britain.
He looked on with joy as his son played a key role, involved in the build up to Steve Coppell’s match-winning goal.
After a league championship and two European Cup wins at Forest, Anderson’s career saw notable spells in the 80s and 90s at Arsenal, Manchester United and Sheffield Wednesday before a year as player-manager at Barnsley and seven more as assistant to Bryan Robson at Middlesbrough.
