And the winner is…

Having just entered the competition on Lionel Birnie’s website to choose my top 10 post-war Watford wins, it seemed like a good idea to try to narrow it down to a personal top five:

 5) Watford 1 Liverpool 0, FA Cup 6th Round, 21/2/70
The game that effectively turned me into a Watford fan. Up to that point, I vaguely supported Spurs, simply because my best friend did. (I should point out that I was only seven at the time.) I wasn’t even aware that there was a team in my local area until I saw the front-page story in the Watford Observer about the forthcoming FA Cup quarter-final against Liverpool. Dad wouldn’t take me, but once Watford had won, I was hooked enough to be upset when we got thrashed by Chelsea in the semis. I made my first visit to Vicarage Road the next season, and that was that.

4) Manchester United 1 Watford 2, League Cup 3rd Round, 4/10/78
Another seminal cup tie that I didn’t attend. But I managed to avoid hearing the score (it was much easier in those days) so that I could watch the highlights on Sportsnight without knowing the result. I can still remember my elation as Luther scored the two goals that launched him as a true Hornet hero, and the tension as I prayed that we could hold on. We did, and the feeling that Graham Taylor was creating something really special was starting to grow.

3) Watford 8 Sunderland 0, 1st Division, 25/9/82
This result (still astonishing nearly 30 years later) had much the same effect. Watford had started their first season in the top flight well, with four wins out of six, but this score made the country sit up and take notice. With four goals for Luther, two for Ross and two for Cally, it serves as the examplar of every demolition of unsuspecting opponents GT’s team unleashed in those glorious years. It was also the last game I went to before leaving for university – not a bad send-off.

2) Watford 2 Bolton Wanderers 0, 1st Division Play-off Final, 31/5/99
I’ve written about the personal significance of this game elsewhere, so let’s just celebrate the achievement of Aidy Boothroyd’s team in building a late run to the play-offs that culminated in what was actually a fairly comfortable win over a Bolton team that never really turned up. Nicky Wright’s overhead kick is the best goal I can remember a Watford player scoring in a high-pressure game, while Allan Smart’s second relieved that pressure in the most glorious, cathartic way imaginable.

1) Watford 7 Southampton 1, League Cup 2nd Round, 2nd Leg, 2/9/80
Again, I’ve already noted this as my most memorable game, all the more so for coming a week after we’d succumbed 4-0 in the away leg. If I ever forge a career as a motivation speaker (which is highly unlikely, frankly), I will use this tie as a prime example of the importance of not accepting the inevitability of failure when things go against you initially. And yet the same team lost heavily again in the 5th Round of the League Cup that season, 5-0 in a replay at Coventry (who were, admittedly, a 1st Division club at the time), as if to remind us that they were only human after all.