THERE are moments in every football club’s history when their fate changes on the result of a single game.

Alex Ferguson may never have gone on to have a stand at Old Trafford named in his honour and enjoyed a quarter of a century of success had it not been for Mark Robins’ goal in the 1990 FA Cup third round.

Robert Pires’ dive against Portsmouth to win a penalty meant Arsenal stayed Invincible.

Steven Gerrard’s slip against Chelsea just last season that saw Liverpool’s title challenge fall away.

For Swindon Town, that game did not even involve them. Instead it took place some 63 miles away on the south coast where, on December 20, 2008, Colin Calderwood took his struggling Nottingham Forest side to take on Southampton.

Forest were in the Championship’s bottom three and Town legend Calderwood was one defeat away from getting the boot.

Calderwood was also heading up Town chairman Andrew Fitton’s shortlist of potential replacements for Maurice Malpas.

Forest goals that day from Joe Garner and Wes Morgan saw Calderwood given a six-day stay of execution. By the time the Scot was shown the door by City Ground chairman Nigel Doughty, Fitton had turned to Danny Wilson.

Wilson would last until March 2011, but only one full season at the helm. Given Calderwood’s winning percentage in charge of English clubs in the Football League still sits at more than 40 per cent and the esteem in which he is held by the fans, the story of Swindon could have been vastly different over the last few years.

Calderwood is not a man of ‘what ifs’. Discussing the period with him deep in the depths of Brighton & Hove Albion’s wonderful Community Stadium, he does not look back at December 2008 with remorse, but the timeline of events that month do have a touch of Sliding Doors about them.

“The impression was Swindon were waiting for our result to be a negative one,” Calderwood recalls.

“Then the week before Christmas we went to Southampton and won 2-0 – which seemed to be the sort of result we got in crunch games. There was upturn in our results which prolonged my time at Forest.

“Then on Boxing Day we were three down against Doncaster at half-time, we lost that game 4-1. On the morning of that game Danny was given the Swindon job. At some point they had to make that decision.

“I was thinking we would beat Doncaster and move out of the bottom three. We didn’t and the (Forest) chairman made a decision to have a change.

“I think people would not have thought it a shock, something was definitely in the offing, in terms of they must have been doing their work of finding a new manager at Nottingham Forest. On reflection, I still wouldn’t have left Forest even if I had been offered that (Town) job.”

No formal approach was ever made by Town for Calderwood, but he would not have abandoned his project at the City Ground even if an offer had been forthcoming.

“There was strong rumour, a strong link because of the past, but there was nothing offered and certainly nothing that ever had a dotted I or a crossed T on,” he added.

“With the interest, if something had happened at Forest it would have been a very nice fall-back position, but there certainly wasn’t any offer.

“The fact they’d made contact through my agent meant there was a story in it, but we never got to a stage where I had an understanding of the finances of the club or the direction the club was going.”

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Colin Calderwood celebrates Town's Division One play-off triumph

Had the axe fallen on Calderwood’s Forest spell earlier he would have had no apprehension about immediately jumping back into work at the County Ground.

“Of course I would have been interested in taking the Swindon job had I lost the job at Forest earlier,’’ he admitted.

“At that time I would have jumped straight back in definitely, being the club it was and the chances that I felt could be afforded as well.

“I would probably have tried to find out a little bit more, but at the time I was so concerned about the job that I was in, that consumes probably all of your time.”

After his dismissal at Forest, Calderwood took a break from management. He joined Newcastle as a member of the coaching staff and was eventually appointed as Chris Hughton’s assistant, the first of four stints by the side of his former Tottenham teammate.

He did return to a management briefly with Hibernian, but left to reunite with Hughton at Birmingham. Calderwood admits his decision to depart the Edinburgh club was a “selfish” move made for personal reasons.

Since then he has served as assistant at Norwich and now with Brighton, but still has plans to return to the big chair.

“Management is still something I would like to get back to,” he says in his deep Dumfries tones.

“In the period between Norwich and joining at Brighton I had a couple of interviews about joining other clubs and didn’t get the job. It reiterated just how hard it is to be given that responsibility of being a manager.

“If it comes along I want to do it, and I’m not shy about saying that, but I can’t and I won’t walk away from any project that I’m involved with unless the people there are telling me ‘it’ll be better if you go’.

“I don’t you think you ever really know where the next opportunity is going to come. You want to be in the Premiership, but it’s not going to happen.

“Ideally you want it to be at a professional club.

“You just want people that are honest with you. In hard times they’re still going to sack you, but just be honest about it.”

Swindon Advertiser:

Calderwood scores against Notts County in 1987

Having played and coached in every division, Calderwood would have no qualms about starting again at the very bottom.

“I would be prepared to drop back down the leagues. Beyond management, I want to end up as a director of football or something like that. That’s the end plan really,’’ he said.

“In my time out I started my level one, two and three for youth coaching. I so completely understand the academy or centre of excellence side, whatever that is as well. Getting to grips with the FA blueprint and all of that.

“I started that and I’ll continue that, because I don’t have the younger qualifications. I’ve got all the senior ones and I thought if you’re really going to run the club you have got to run the way you want to do it as a manager, from the bottom up.

“That’s why I’m learning about it, for the future, beyond being in charge, because I can see lots of good coaches out there.

“I wouldn’t want to be a dark cloud over anyone, but I would eventually like to be a general manager, that style of role. I think I would enjoy it.

“You can be a manager and a coach all the time, but you’ll run out of opportunities.”

When the time does come for Calderwood to return to the management game he feels the he will be in a better place to succeed, what with working at clubs with bigger resources such as Newcastle United and Norwich.

“I wouldn’t be shocked by what came through the door in the morning,” he muses.

“The biggest problems you have are births, marriages and deaths.

“It’s not the problems that they cause, it’s the difference emotions have on people and handling that I never thought was a problem, but it is.

“It should be a priority and you should have something within the structure of your club that accommodates and helps, even people joining the club and how easy you make it for them to integrate.

“You see how it helps at bigger clubs and how much the players lean on the people that do help them. So you’ve got to have the resource, it’s so valuable, it should be available and should be under someone’s remit within the club.

“It doesn’t matter if you’ve got no money or all the money in the world to do it, you can still help somebody.”

Calderwood was known as a fierce competitor and an intense character in his playing days. It seems experience may have tempered that slightly, or simply taught that there are different ways to achieve the same outcome.

“I was fairly intense in training and before a game, I thought that was the right way to prepare. In my early days I thought that was the right way for everyone to prepare,” he explains.

“As you go along you see different personalities and characters. I was lucky enough to be at Tottenham and play with Jurgen Klinsmann, who was very relaxed before a game. He would just read a paper, you know beyond 2pm, but that was his way of tuning in.

“Obviously Jurgen Klinsmann is better than me, but I’ve got to get myself to a match level in the way I do it. He did it in a different style, but he was fully committed and switched on when it came to a game.

“Just because someone does it in a different way doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”

Wherever Calderwood ends up next there is no doubt it will be a well-considered move - the Scot knows what he wants.

The real question is will it be at the County Ground?