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 I’ve been a Watford fan long enough to witness all but two of the club’s Football League promotions. So many memories: Dad not letting me stay to watch the Divison 4 trophy presentation after the Southport game in 1978 because he wanted to “beat the traffic”; the 4-0 win against Hull on a gloriously sunny May evening the following year; running on the pitch after the win against Wrexham that put us in the top flight for the first time; the bedlam on the terraces at Craven Cottage in 1998 when Jason Lee scored to secure the League 2 title; the emotional turmoil of the play-off final win against Bolton, just 48 hours after my father’s sudden death; the oddly straightforward (and hugely satisfying) dismissal of Leeds in 2006, indoors in Cardiff; and my anger at the way we threw away the chance to win the Championship in the final game of 2015, which almost soured the joy of promotion.

And where was I when the Hornets clinched promotion against Millwall a few weeks ago? Here in my back bedroom, of course, sitting in front of my computer, fending off the cat’s demands for yet more food. I think I yelled “Yes!” and punched the air at the final whistle, which at least got rid of the cat for a few minutes, but it’s not a day that will live long in the memory. I watched the post-match coverage on Hive Live, then went out for a walk and spent the evening watching TV. A few congratulatory texts from friends (including a grudging one from my Brentford-supporting mate) were as close as I got to a communal celebration.

And so this strangest of seasons is over, hopefully never to be repeated. The club have done magnificently on every level, from their support of the NHS to the intelligent recruitment policy, from the superb quality of the pitch to the brave decision to appoint Xisco that probably saved us from the play-offs (or worse). But watching it all on a TV or computer screen was a poor substitute for the real thing, even if I actually got to see more games than in any of my previous 50 seasons as a Hornets fan – I usually only get to half a dozen away games, whereas this year I was able to enjoy pretty much all of them (though enjoyment was in short supply for the first half of the season).

Watching the FA Cup final yesterday (the first for a few years that I’ve watched all the way through) just reinforced the difference that fans make to the football experience. Emotionally, I was there with those Leicester supporters as they celebrated Tielemans’ incredible goal, and then as they chewed their fingernails to the quick while the clock ticked down. And the noise they made – you’d never have guessed the stadium was only a fifth full.

So it was a pleasure to receive the email from the club inviting me to renew my season ticket for next season. By then I will have had my second jab (as will most of the country, with a bit of luck) and it ought to be possible for Vicarage Road to host a proper crowd again. Wild horses wouldn’t keep me away.

We aren’t the champions

I was planning to mark the end of the season with a cosy article running through my memories of the celebrations I’ve been lucky enough to be part of as a Watford fan, from our Division 4 title in GT’s first season to the Play-Off Final against Leeds in Cardiff. But, like most Watford fans, I don’t feel like celebrating right now.

I think it was the play ‘An Evening with Gary Lineker’ that made the point that watching football, uniquely among leisure pursuits, has the ability to affect your mood for days after a match has finished. I’m not usually too bad on that score: by the time I get home on a Saturday night, I’m more or less over the triumph or despair that followed the final whistle of that afternoon’s game. But the outcome of the Sheffield Wednesday game has soured my mood for the entire Bank Holiday weekend, and it’s all the worse because (like most Hornets fans) I was expecting a repeat dose of the euphoria I experienced at five o’clock the previous Saturday.

I texted a friend before the game that all the clichés of an end-of-season celebration were present and correct: flags, balloons, beach balls and other inflatables, fancy dress costumes, even giant trophies made out of cardboard covered with tinfoil. By the end, we’d witnessed another set of clichés, representing the dark side of football celebrations; from the harmless but moronic Mexican wave (something that has no place at any serious sporting event) to the equally moronic, and definitely harmful, pitch invasions that scuppered our slim chances of grabbing a late winner. And don’t get me started on the flares.

So I found myself, once the final whistle had blown, standing watching the heaving mass of fans on the pitch, listening to the plaintive appeals for them to leave so that the lap of honour could begin, feeling as low as I’ve felt all season (well, perhaps with the exception of the kick in the guts that was Ipswich’s last-gasp winner six weeks ago). Which is absurd, of course, given that Watford have achieved their goal of reaching the Premier League, and this in the most competitive Championship season in living memory. But that’s football fans for you, our emotions always governed by our most recent experience.

To judge by that lap of honour, the players are no different. I have fond memories of the equivalent tours of the pitch at the end of those seasons under Rodgers, Mackay and Dyche when we’d finished somewhere in mid-table, and when the lap of honour celebrated a communal feeling of joy and optimism for the future. There was precious little of that in evidence on Saturday, for all the stadium announcer’s laudable efforts to raise the mood. The players knew they’d blown it, just like we did, and it was pointless trying to pretend none of us cared.

So, we aren’t the champions after all. But we have been promoted, and as the days pass, it’s that fact that will come to take precedence over all the bad memories from Saturday. As a wise man once wrote: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.” We got what we needed from this season. Bring on the Premier League.

10 reasons why it’s great to be a Hornet

I’m sure I’m not the only Watford fan who is still utterly incapable of calm, dispassionate analysis of our season or the implications of yesterday’s results for the club’s future. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I keep spontaneously breaking into a rendition of ‘Tommie Hoban’s having a party...’ and finding myself grinning stupidly at inappropriate moments.

Still, I had to mark the moment somehow, so here’s my list of 10 reasons why it’s great to be a Hornet right now:

1) The Pozzo family...

2) ... thanks to whom we finally have a proper four-sided ground again, complete with stands rightly named after the two people who did more than anything to establish the Watford FC we know and love today

3) We’ve got Lloydinho...

4) ... and, possibly more importantly for the outcome of this season, Troydeeneyo

5) The 1881, who’ve achieved the improbable feat of making Vicarage Road a cauldron of noise

6) The many and varied media channels that comment on and support the Hornets, all of them unfailingly classy and intelligent: the Watford Observer’s simultaneously passionate and objective reports, the brilliant From The Rookery End podcast, the always shrewd and witty BHappy blogs, the ever-growing archive of Watford lore that is the Tales From The Vicarage series of books, plus other bloggers and tweeters too numerous to mention

7) Goals galore. While Chelsea fans watch their team bore their way to the Premier League title, we’ve seen lots and lots and lots of fabulous goals this season. And I write as someone who missed the home win against Blackpool

8) Slav. A different kind of manager, and exactly what we needed this season. Focused, intelligent and fearless. Deserves a shot at the big time

9) We will hopefully never again have to play our supposed rivals from a horrible town in Bedfordshire that I can’t bring myself to name, who are currently, and deservedly, marooned in League Two

10 Last, but most certainly not least... We are going up, I said we are going up!

Approaching the bell

Most track and field events are fairly easy for the casual viewer to appreciate. All the track races up to and including 1500m are over in less than four minutes, while each individual jump or throw is self-contained; even if you don’t see the whole competition, success and failure are usually easy to tell apart.

The 10,000m, though, is more of an acquired taste: 25 laps of the track in which nothing much seems to happen until the very end. Indeed, unless you attend an athletics meeting in the flesh, you’re unlikely to get the chance to watch an entire race from start to finish; TV producers tend to show the start and finish, filling in the dull middle laps by covering the field events. You can often see the 10,000m runners in the background, on their way to completing yet another circuit of the track.

You can probably see where I’m going with this. I reckon a 10,000m race has a lot in common with this season in the Championship. After a blanket start, a few runners soon drop off the back of the pack, clearly destined to be lapped (relegated). The rest trail round and round the track in a long line in which the exact order changes regularly. More are gradually dropped as the relentless pace takes its toll. Meanwhile, at the front, the big guns take it in turns to lead, focusing on being in the right position at the business end of the race.

And when the end is finally in sight, with 600m or so to go, the strongest runners slip into a higher gear and sprint the final lap, trusting that they’ve got enough in the tank to hold off the opposition. Mo Farah is the modern master of the sprint finish, of course, taking off as if turbocharged. In the big races in recent years, no one has been able to stay with him.

I won’t spell out all the parallels with the Championship season. The point is that the runners in this particular race are approaching the bell that signals the final lap. The pack is down to eight – though a couple of those are barely clinging on to their hopes of automatic promotion – and this weekend’s fixtures are the equivalent of one of those periodic surges when the leaders try to shape off the weaker runners. The question is, are we Mo Farah (or at least one of the Ethiopians and Kenyans who invariably win silver and bronze behind him)?

No one knows how this race is going to end. But if we’re still in the leading pack on Monday night, we’ll have given ourselves the best possible chance of going up automatically. C’mon you ’Orns!

A question of expectation

So it’s that time of year again, and I find myself entering my 45th season as a Watford fan. That’s 45 years of hope and despair, elation and desolation, anticipation and disappointment – and, let’s be honest about this, an awful lot of middle-of-the-road mediocrity. I’m sure most football fans would say the same, whoever they support.

Of the 44 seasons I’ve lived through, just six ended in Watford gaining promotion, and two of those were through the playoffs. What’s more, I don’t remember many of those promotions being greeted with a nonchalent shrug by Hornets fans, as being no more than they expected. For all the growing sense of confidence and ambition around the club in the late 70s, the three promotions under Graham Taylor the first time round all seemed to come more quickly than anticipated, while the play-off wins under GT mark two and Aidy Boothroyd came out of left field (and catapulted us into a Premier League we weren’t remotely ready for – but that’s another story). Arguably, only the Division Two title in 1997/98 was expected, after GT had ridden back into town like the heroic sheriff in a Western.

But, significantly, that sense of expectation had been equally great the previous season, when Kenny Jackett had taken the reins after relegation from Division 1 – and when we’d ended up 13th. Indeed, the following season apart, the only seasons when I can honestly say I expected Watford to gain promotion were those immediately following a relegation. Again, that’s par for the course for football fans everywhere. According to their (our) warped logic, if we were in a higher division last season, it stands to reason that we’ll get back there as quickly as possible.

Since the arrival of the Pozzos, though, Watford fans’ expectation levels have risen. Not immediately, not across the board – but then Gianfranco Zola’s achievement in reaching the playoff final in his first season stoked the fires. I was certainly swept up by the tidal wave, even going so far as to put cold hard cash on our winning the Championship title last season. This time, expectation was rewarded with 12th place. There’s £40 I’ll never see again.

And now we’re at that point again, and I’m sure plenty of Watford fans think this has got to be the season when we finally crack it. A decent squad, strengthened by significant arrivals over the summer; not the strongest set of rivals we’ve ever faced (though in the Championship, who knows?); a solid core of players who know now what this league is all about – Deeney, Doyley, Abdi, Anya, Pudil, Ekstrand, Forestieri, Battochio.

Me, I’m not so sure. I worry that we’ve signed too many players: how long is it going take Beppe Sannino to find his best starting eleven, his best formation? How long will it take the likes of Paredes, Tamas and Ighalo to adjust to Championship football, if indeed they ever do? Who’s going to score the goals if Deeney leaves and Vydra turns out to be the player we had in the second half of the season before last, not the first half?

I’m not saying we can’t do it, I’m just saying that I’m going to reserve judgement until I’ve seen a few games. And I’m certainly not putting money on it this time. If there’s one thing for sure, it’s that there are no sure things in football.