Captain courageous

For all the excellence of the Tales from the Vicarage Live event last Sunday, on the theme of captains, it was frustrating that host Adam Leventhal never asked the fundamental question: what does the captain of a football team actually do? I’ve been watching the game for nearly half a century and I’m still no closer to a definitive answer.

In other sports, such as cricket, the captain clearly plays a pivotal role. When India go out to bat at The Oval this morning, Joe Root will be responsible for deciding who bowls, when and how, and what fields are set for each batsman. Of course, much of this will have been discussed beforehand with the coach, but the captain still has to react to events on the field and adjust the plans accordingly.

But in football, this is the manager’s role, even if the only ways in which he can influence the game while it is in motion are by (a) making substitutions and (b) shouting and waving a lot. As for the captain, his role often seems largely ceremonial: leading the team out, taking part in the toss for ends. Indeed, some years ago, when there was much agonising in the press about who should be England captain (I think the current incumbent had just disgraced himself), the manager of Germany or France was quoted as saying that they couldn’t see what all the fuss was about: they simply gave the armband to the most senior player as a kind of recognition for long service.

Anyway, back at the Palace Theatre, the interviewees didn’t give many clues. To be fair, Les Taylor only captained the team once – even if was in the biggest game in the club’s history – and by his own admission, he only did so because the obvious candidates were all suspended or injured. As for Wilf Rostron, he was so reticent that it was hard to imagine him leading a class of schoolchildren across a road, let alone inspiring a group of professional sportsmen.

Neil Cox was a more obvious leader, though the main example of this was his role in the famous wage deferral that helped save the club from administration in 2002. This was the captain as shop steward, and perhaps this is how many see their role.

But then, earlier in the day, we’d seen a very different interpretation from Troy Deeney. It’s too simplistic to say that he singlehandedly turned the game round against Spurs, but he certainly had a major influence on it; thundering forward, barging opponents off the ball, scoring a magnificent goal. Was it before the next corner (the one that Craig Cathcart scored from) that Troy picked up a bottle of water from behind the goal and emptied it over his head, like a boxer between rounds? He has a sense of the theatre of the game like no other Watford player I can remember, and the gesture may have helped distract the Spurs defence from the threat of Cathcart.

When he’s on this kind of form, Troy’s performance is the textbook definition of leading by example. Other captains may not see the role that way, or may not be capable of dragging a team over the line the way Troy does, but it’s the best answer I’ve found so far to the question of what a captain does.

We’re going to Wem-ber-ley – again

I’m sure there are plenty of football fans – particularly those who follow unfashionable clubs in the provinces – for whom a trip to Wembley Stadium is a rare treat, maybe even a once-in-a-lifetime event. But for those of us who grew up less than 10 miles away, it’s really not that special.

My dad took me to Wembley for the first time, to watch England play East Germany in 1970. England won 3-1, but I mainly remember the night for the hour or more it took to get out of the car park afterwards. I honestly can’t recall if Dad took me to any more internationals, but I’m pretty sure that if he did, we didn’t drive .

After that, there were a couple of England schoolboy internationals in the early 70s. Presumably the FA offered bulk deals to schools; at any rate, Ashfield organised cheap class trips. Rediscovering the programmes years later, I found that I’d unwittingly had my first sight of a certain John Wilfred Rostron, as he was then listed.

I went to a few more full internationals over the next decade, culminating in Luther’s glorious full international debut against Luxembourg in 1982, when he scored a hat trick and could have had at least as many again. Then, two years later, I finally got to see Watford play at Wembley in the FA Cup Final – and it was one of the most anticlimactic days of my football-watching life.

For the rest of the 80s, I was more often at Wembley for rock concerts than football; U2, Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones. (I missed Live Aid, though; I was on a year abroad, studying in Hamburg, where I watched the proceedings on TV.) I did go to the Football League v the Rest of the World match in 1987, where Hornets centre-back John McClelland had to contend with Maradona, Platini and Lineker and still kept a clean sheet, the League winning 3-0.

In the 90s there were more concerts, and also a rugby union international, for a change. While the Millennium Stadium was being rebuilt, Wales played their home Five Nations (as it then was) matches at Wembley. My friend Andy came up from Cardiff and we watched the Welsh get roundly thrashed by a skilful France team.

Towards the end of the decade, I was working for a running magazine, which involved reviewing local events. You did this by running in them, so one Sunday morning I found myself lining up on the running track inside Wembley Stadium for the inaugural Wembley 10K. After puffing round the streets for an hour, the finish on the same track at least allowed me to indulge in some Olympian fantasies, even if I was struggling to finish in the top 500.

And then there was the Play-Off Final against Bolton in 1999, one of my most emotional footballing memories – for the result and performance, of course, but also because my father had died two days earlier. That year, and again in 2000, I also went to the FA Trophy Final to watch Kingstonian, who my friend Stuart supported. In the first one, they beat a little team no one had heard of called Forest Green Rovers.

Coming into the present century, I can say that I was present at the first concert held in the rebuilt Wembley. Okay, it starred George Michael, who wouldn’t have been my choice, but I was married by then. There have been more Springsteen concerts, too, though it’s really not the best place to see him. And more recently, of course, I’ve doubled my tally of Watford games at the home of football with those two dismal defeats against Crystal Palace, first in the Play-Off Final and then in the FA Cup semi-final.

So when I rock up for the Spurs game tomorrow evening, you’ll excuse me if I don’t look too impressed. I’ll be a lot more impressed if we come away with three points, mind you.

Get with the programme special: the young ones

With England playing Germany tomorrow night, it seemed like a good time to write about a programme that’s been sitting on my desk for a while now, waiting to be filed. It dates all the way back to May 20th, 1972, when England took on West Germany in a schools’ international at Wembley Stadium.

If I remember rightly, this trip and a couple of similar ones were organised by my junior school, Ashfield in Bushey, and we witnessed a packed programme of pre-match entertainment with a notably military theme. First up were the Band of the Corps of Royal Engineers, followed by a gymnastic display by the Junior Leaders’ Regiment of the RE and the Royal Air Force Police Dog Team, before the band returned for ‘Community Singing’ conducted by the inevitable Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart. (He used to lead the singalongs that preceded the FA Cup Final, too.) The programme helpfully includes the lyrics to a decidedly mixed bag of songs, including ‘Back home’ (the 1970 England World Cup theme), ‘Consider yourself’ from Oliver, Cliff’s classic ‘Congratulations’ and, um, ‘The happy wanderer’.

Of course, the main fun of such matches in retrospect is discovering which future giants of the game you saw in their formative years. In this case, it’s not a bad haul, with a strong Watford connection: future skipper John Wilfred Rostron of St Thomas Aquinas RC School, and future Assistant Manager Raymond Colin Wilkins of Townfield Secondary Modern. Other names I recognise include John Sparrow and Clive Walker (both Chelsea), John Trewick (West Brom, Newcastle, Oxford) and Trevor Ross (Arsenal and Everton).

The pen portraits of the players are a joy, as you’d expect. Almost every one includes a variation on the phrase “hopes to become a professional footballer”, apart from Terence Pashley, who “plans to train for the catering industry”. (I just Googled him, and it turns it he had a long career at Burnley, Blackpool and Bury; I hope he wasn’t too disappointed.)

Judging by my dad’s notes on the team sheet, England won 4-0, with Wilf Rostron (wearing no. 11, and thus presumably playing as a winger*) scoring one of them. The programme also includes photos from the schoolboys’ previous outing, when England had tonked Holland 5-1. In my 10-year-old innocence, I assumed that glorious days lay ahead for the senior England team once this gilded generation grew up. Sadly, as we know, they didn’t even qualify for the next two World Cups – one of which was won by West Germany, while Holland featured in both finals. If nothing else, it shows that England’s failure to turn youthful promise into adult achievement is by no means a new phenomenon.

*If this sentence makes no logical sense to you, ask someone over 40