Random World Cup memories no.1

Watching Jay Demerit playing for the USA against England just now reminded me of the first time I ever saw a Watford player in the World Cup.

It was the summer of 1982 and I was living in a village in (West) Germany called Rüchheim, just outside Ludwigshafen, where I was supposedly perfecting my German, prior to going to university, by working in a printing works. (All that really happened was that I acquired a Rhineland accent, which is roughly the equivalent of a nice middle-class boy from Berlin coming to the UK and learning to speak English like Noddy Holder.) It was a miserable, lonely few months for a teenager who’d never spent more than a fortnight away from home before, but at least the owners of the house where I was boarding allowed me to watch their TV occasionally.

It wasn’t an offer I took them up on very often (if you’ve ever seen German television, you’ll understand why), but when the World Cup rolled around I was grateful. Which is how I came to be watching when Northern Ireland played Spain in a fateful group match. And when Gerry Armstrong scored what turned out to be the only goal of the game, I practically leapt out of my seat. “Der spielt für meine Mannschaft - für Watford!” I gibbered, flabbergasted at seeing a Watford player not only appearing in the World Cup (and I’m pretty sure he was the first one ever to do so), but playing a leading role there. I spent the rest of the match trying to explain to my baffled hosts why I was so excited.

Since then I’ve seen John Barnes come within a whisker of putting England level against Argentina (‘hand of god’ notwithstanding), but apart from that, Watford-related World Cup highlights have been thin on the ground. The funny thing is, I can’t remember a single goal Gerry Armstrong scored for Watford, even though I must have seen plenty of them.

All’s well that ends well

Random thoughts from a very welcome final home win of the season:

• Lucky for us that Reading had already left for their summer hols, mentally at least. The last time I saw such slack defending, Watford were doing it
• Danny Graham may never get a better chance to score a hat-trick; it’s a good thing the two shots he volleyed high over the bar didn’t affect the final score
• The Mexican wave has no place in a football ground, and I will refuse until my dying day to take part in one
• And those red, yellow and black balloons someone in the Rookery blew up in the second half and chucked around were fun for about two minutes, and then became extremely annoying
• I wonder what Arsène Wenger thinks about Henri Lansbury? He sent us a promising, ball-playing midfielder, and after nine months at Vicarage Road he’s about to take return delivery of a first-rate hoofer - some of Henri’s clearances upfield yesterday were positively agricultural. I blame the pitch
• I really hope that’s not the last time I see Heidar Helguson in a Watford shirt, but I fear it will be. For what it’s worth, I’d sign him like a shot if it were feasible: with his injury record, he’s unlikely to be available for a full season, but he’s worth a place in the squad for his effect on opposing defenders alone

Hope reborn?

I said in my last post that I couldn’t see the Hornets winning another game this season: I’m happy to be have been proved wrong this afternoon. It was scrappy and ugly, and Plymouth offered precious little in the way of resistance (it’s odd to see an opposing team play with even less confidence than Watford), but still, a win’s a win.

As it stands, the maximum possible target for safety is 54 points (the most that Sheffield Wednesday, in the last relegation place, can get), which would meaning winning two of our last four games. Then again, if we beat Leicester next week and Wednesday lose (they’ve got their derby against United, incidentally – not a good time to be playing your arch rivals), our real points total and their maximum possible will be the same, making us as good as safe. Statistics can be comforting sometimes, can’t they?

Finally, in the style of Match Of The Day 2, here’s my ‘2 Good, 2 Bad’ from today’s game:

2 Good – Dale Bennett. God, that boy is a good defender. I think he won every single header he contested, and dealt with everything that came his way simply and effectively. I’ve never been so reassured by the presence of a teenage centre-back.

2 Bad – Liam Henderson. Has there ever been a Watford substitute whose arrival on the pitch leads to such a collective lowering of expectations? That was his 21st substitute appearance, and I honestly can’t remember him doing a single thing in any of those games that led me to believe he’s ever going to be worth a place in the starting line-up. I know it’s tough, being sent onto the pitch with 10 or 15 minutes to go with instructions to make things difficult for opposing defenders (at least, that’s what I imagine Malky tells him) – but does he have to do it in such a lumpen, clumsy and downright incompetent fashion?

The death of hope

In the 15 minutes between the end of the first half of tonight’s game against Palace and the start of the second, all the hope drained out of me. It was the strangest thing. Like everyone else, I’d spent the first half leaping out of my seat every couple of minutes, clapping and singing and yelling and generally trying my damnedest to spur the Golden Boys on to glory.

And when none of it worked, something inside of me just gave up the ghost, in tacit acknowledgement that this was it. Those 45 minutes had been our chance to save our season, and we hadn’t taken it. I can’t pretend to have foreseen the second and third Palace goals, but they didn’t come as a surprise either.

It’s odd, because I’m normally a glass-half-full person when it comes to Watford, able to glimpse hope in the darkest hour. But during the second half tonight, I couldn’t even raise the energy to clap or shout. I wasn’t the only one, either. When Danny Graham scored our consolation goal, most of the people around me didn’t even stand up to celebrate. (I did, out of some kind of residual reflex.)

Maybe I’ll feel differently by the time the next home game rolls around. But right now, that feels like the defining game of our season.

Bees hate Hornets

My friend Stuart, who is a Brentford fan, sent me an email a few days ago headed ‘33 years of hurt’; apparently March 23rd, 1977 was the date of Brentford’s most recent victory over Watford.

This matters a lot to Stuart, who regards Watford as one of Brentford’s natural rivals. It’s not just the similarity in the town names and nicknames; when we both started watching football, in the mid-70s, Brentford and Watford played each other a lot as we both bounced around the bottom two divisions. Back then, they had the greater claim to being a big club, having spent some years in the First Division before World War Two, while we were still trying in vain to escape the Third Division (South).

Brentford’s ongoing inability to beat Watford is one reason they harbour a grudge against us. The other is the quality of the ex-Hornets who have subsequently pitched up at Griffin Park. To this day, I only have to mention the name Ian Bolton to send Stuart into a lather. Evidently GT extracted every drop of talent and effort from Bolton before selling him to the Bees, because the hapless figure Brentford fans remember bears no relation to the defensive colossus we hold dear to our hearts.

Since then, a steady stream of former Watford players have enjoyed (if that’s the right word) inauspicious spells at Brentford. They currently have Lionel Ainsworth and Toumani Diagouraga on loan (neither of them any closer to being the finished article than when they left us, by all accounts), while Steve Kabba has been shipped out on loan to Burton Albion. The only honourable exception to this dismal litany is Dean Holdsworth, who established himself as a goalscoring hero at Griffin Park.

So while we smugly patronise non-league Luton (and I confess I smiled as I typed that) and idly debate who we should now regard as our arch rivals, spare a thought for Brentford fans, who may well be secretly hoping our current struggles continue, and that they finally get a chance to end their 33-year wait for a win over Watford next season.

Commercial break

If you’re reading this, the chances are that you’re a Watford fan, which means that you may enjoy my new novel, First Time I Met The Blues.

The story starts in 1964, when three teenagers meet on the terraces at Vicarage Road. Bonding over their shared love of football and music, they form a blues band, and the novel charts their erratic progress over the next 25 years.

As the title suggests, the book is more concerned with music than football. But supporting Watford is a thread that runs through the central characters’ lives, to differing degrees – and that leads directly to a pivotal moment in the lives of one of them.

If you’re interested in finding out more, check out my other blog, First Time I Met The Blues, which also forms part of my website. And if you like the sound of it, please buy a copy while you’re there.

And that’s the end of the commercial break. Normal service (ie inconsequential ramblings about Watford and related matters) will resume shortly.

These little town blues

Recently I’ve been dipping into The Book Of Watford, a lavish publication that my friend Stuart found in a second-hand shop and gave me for my birthday last year. Subtitled ‘A portrait of our town’, it’s a collection of historical photographs of Watford accompanied by extracts from the local papers, and it makes for fascinating reading.

But while the details of the evolution of the town are lovingly covered (with particular emphasis on roads and buildings), there are some glaring omissions. In the entire section on the 1960s, for instance, there’s only one mention of the local football team (a cup tie against Liverpool towards the end of the decade – and not even the most famous one, though admittedly that took place in 1970).

It doesn’t get any better in the 70s and 80s. I may be biased, but I was under the impression that Graham Taylor’s propulsion of the club from Division 4 to Division 1 helped to put Watford on the map, giving the town a recognisable identity to people who previously only knew it as the last town on the railway line before London, or the first major junction on the M1 heading north. At one point in the 80s, the local tourist board was even marketing weekend minibreaks in Watford, with a trip to Vicarage Road as the focal point.

But apart from a brief mention of the celebrations that followed the 1984 FA Cup final, all this goes unrecorded in the book, which seems quite bafflingy. I don’t think it’s just that I’m so wrapped up in my support for the Hornets that I’ve lost all sense of perspective. The fact is that, even when the team weren’t doing so well, 10,000-odd citizens of the town spent alternate Saturdays at Vicarage Road, their moods rising and falling with the fortunes of the team. How can you create a ‘portrait of our town’ and not take that into account?

Is half a game worse than no game at all?

For the first time that I can remember, I missed a Watford goal – two of them, in fact – on Tuesday, having only arrived at half-time. Not my fault, but the result of one of those hugely frustrating cock-ups that only the British railway system seems capable of, which meant that I spent the best part of an hour on an overcrowded train at Euston, waiting for it to leave. I won’t bore you with the details.

Having arrived at Watford Junction at 8.15 and run/power-walked to the Vic just in time to hear the half-time whistle, I then had to sit through a second half that made a mockery of the effort I’d made to witness it.

I was going to write that this was the first time I’d ever missed the entire first half of a football match, but then I remembered that it wasn’t quite true. Back in the late 80s I went Interrailing with my friend Andy, and we spent a hectic (and sweltering) August day in Munich: Dachau concentration camp in the morning, the obligatory visit to a beer hall in the evening, and in between, what else but a trip to the Olympic Stadium to watch Bayern Munich in action. (I’m sure the city has some fine museums, galleries and historic buildings, but we only had one day and you’ve got to get your priorities right.)

It was a cunning plan, and I thought I’d cracked it when I consulted a tube map and found there was a station right by the ground. True, there was an asterisk leading to a note that said ‘only open on matchdays’, but that was no problem; this was a matchday, wasn’t it?

I don’t know if I misread the map, or if there was some exception to the rule I wasn’t aware of. I just remember the train ending its journey at the station before the one we wanted and the conductor turfing us off. Okay, we’ll get a bus, we thought – except that there weren’t any due at the stop outside the station for hours. The whole area was deserted, in fact, as only German towns can be on Saturday afternoons, when the shops close and everyone stays at home.

And so we ended up walking to the Olympic Stadium, through a vast residential area that was originally the 1972 Olympic Village, arriving – yes – in time to see the second half of the match (though we still had to pay the full ticket price,). I can’t remember who Bayern were playing, but I do remember that the inside of the stadium was unlike any I’d been in before and since –and that the 45 minutes of football I saw that day was a damn sight more entertaining than the second half against Bristol City.

Next time I’ll be getting an earlier train, that’s for sure.

This is getting ridiculous

Having finally seen (and thoroughly enjoyed) my first Watford game since mid-December last night, I was disappointed to hear that the Palace match on Saturday 13th has had to be postponed because of their continued involvement in the FA Cup.

It can’t be helped, I suppose, but it does mean that Watford’s first home game on a Saturday afternoon in 2010 will be on February 27th - which is, quite frankly, ridiculous. I enjoy midweek games, but they are a bit of a chore to get to and from, especially in the depths of winter. Then there’s the inevitably smaller attendance for midweek games (I’m sure Sheffield United would have brought more fans down on a weekend), which hits the club’s bank balance at a time when every penny counts.

I’ve just worked out that of our 17 remaining league games, a maximum of five will take place on a Saturday afternoon at Vicarage Road - and that’s assuming that none get moved for TV. Like I said, ridiculous.

You’re my favourite

Trying to think of something to write to usher in the fourth year of this blog, I realised that I’ve never listed my all-time top five Watford players. Those who’ve been reading carefully won’t be surprised to find that all five came through the Watford youth system (albeit that one of them signed fairly late) - somehow I can never feel the same affection for a player we’ve bought as I do for those we’ve raised.

5) Lloyd Doyley

No surprise here, either. A Watford legend in the making, and (I suspect and hope) destined to be an example of that increasingly rare phenomenon, the one-club man. The thing about Lloyd is that, unlike far too many footballers, he actually gets better as he gets older. Who’d have thought he’d be so good playing on the left, for example, or that he’d produce so many useful crosses this season. And as for the goal - no let’s not go there, the memory of missing it is still too painful.

4) John Barnes

Only number four? It’s true that if this was a list of the best footballers I’d ever seen in a Watford shirt, Digger would be right at the top, no shadow of a doubt. From the moment he came on a sub in a game against Oldham (I was there), it was obvious we had something special on our hands. So many memorable goals - one at home to Liverpool in the league (mentioned on WML today, funnily enough) sticks out in particular - and the kind of sublime skill most players can only dream about. And yet, churlish as it may seem to point this out, he wasn’t the most consistent of players. Maybe that’s inevitable - maybe gifts like that don’t lend themselves to consistency - but he’s the only player in this list who was capable of disappearing for a game or two.

3) Keith Mercer

Ah, my first favourite. I’ve written at length on Keith in an article that appeared in BSAD’s ‘Tributes’ section (you can read it here), so I won’t repeat myself. But I will repeat the description of the goal that typified his never-say-die attitude:

“One-nil up in a Second Round FA Cup tie against Colchester in 1977, Watford were still looking shaky when a clearance went bouncing harmlessly towards the Colchester penalty area. As the left back sauntered across to collect the loose ball he became aware of a bulky yellow and black object bearing down on him like a jet-propelled battering ram. Having sprinted half the length of the pitch, Keith had built up enough momentum to run straight through a brick wall, never mind reach the ball first. The hapless defender went flying like a skittle and Keith slotted the ball past the startled goalkeeper.”

2) Nigel Gibbs

I don’t need to explain to Watford fans why Gibbsy is so high on this list: say the phrase ‘model footballer’ and he’s the one I picture. Having said that, I think my championing of him was largely born of frustration with a succession of managers who relegated him to the sidelines in favour of ‘wing-backs’ who were better than him at getting forward and crossing the ball – and, repeatedly, worse at doing the job the full back is actually there for, ie defending. Darren Bazeley, Des Lyttle, even Patrick sodding Blondeau - they all kept Nigel out of the team, and thus denied him the all-time appearance record his ability and loyalty had earned him.

1) Luther Blissett

Still, if Nigel had to be kept off the top of the appearance list by anyone, it might as well be Luther (also the man who took Keith Mercer’s first team place, incidentally). As with Gibbsy, there was perhaps an element of protectiveness in my attitude to Luther, a reaction against the papers that labelled him ‘Luther Miss-it’, ignoring the fact that for every chance he missed, he scored from another. Even when he hit a hat trick on his England debut (in a 9-0 win against Luxembourg at Wembley - and yes, I was there), the press focused on the chances he spurned. He couldn’t win. But those of us who watched him every week knew his essential qualities: a born trier who would never let you down. The fact that he came back to the club twice after leaving only enhanced his legend.