NATIONALITIES
British PlayersOur first competitive game in 1878 featured at least 7 English men (and I suspect all 11 starters were English), and it continued like that for around nine years until our first Scottish player (James Irons) made his debut in the 2-0 FA Cup victory over Mellors. In 1893 our first Welshman (John Bullock) made his only competitive appearance and then in 1902 we had our first Irishman (Andrew Garra from The Republic) before Patrick Nelis from Northern Ireland first played in 1922.
Non-Brits
Our first non-British player might have been Alex Wood, but he was actually born in Scotland and emigrated to the US with his family aged 14 (and subsquently represented the USA at the national level, played for them in the 1930 World Cup and is in the US Soccer Hall Of Fame!). The two Jacoby brothers (Charles and John) who played in the 1870's both had German-born parents who became British citizens in the 1840's, while Alfred Gunn was born in Germany but I am assuming he was English seeing as he played for us in 1947 (during the War!). So our first true non-British player was Arthur Lightening, a South African goalkeeper who played five games for Forest in 1958 and then we had no other overseas players until the Swiss Raimondo Ponte in 1980.