Olly Wicken looks at how we can put the pennies back in the coffers.
On the most recent ‘From The Rookery End’ podcast, it was suggested that, if Watford FC’s financial situation worsens, Watford fans might need to be back out on the street with buckets.
This was a reference to the way that the Watford Supporters Trust raised cash when the club looked like going out of business following the collapse of ITV Digital in 2002.
But 2002 is only the most recent example of Watford fans trying to save the club from financial disaster. Watford fans first swung into action shortly after the club became a limited company in 1909. And the methods employed have often been more creative than simply shaking buckets.
Fans formed an organisation called ‘Watford Football Supporters Club’ during the 1910/11 season to help the club pay its way. Regular subscriptions were taken (an initial sixpence followed by threepence per week to be paid in at Mr Johnson’s confectionery shop at 112 High Street). But, from the start, thought was given to other ways of raising more funds. At its very first meeting, on 19 December 1910, the newly formed organisation considered plans for its first ‘smoking concert’.
By the 1930s, social events such whist drives were being organised to raise funds. On one occasion there was a dance competition at the Oddfellows Hall at which the club’s manager Neil McBain judged the heats of both the foxtrot and the waltz.
But one of the most effective forms of fund-raising was one that, looking back from 2024, seems particularly quaint.
In November 1912, the club’s Directors announced that they couldn’t see a way of finishing the season without an injection of £250 that they didn’t have. The Supporters Club responded with what the next year’s Watford Observer annual football handbook described as a ‘lightning campaign’ over five weeks. Their main idea was to run a competition. Entrants were invited to use their skill to calculate the time at which a watch, wound up on a given day, would run down. It proved exceptionally popular. On Boxing Day 1912, the Supporters Club were able to announce that they’d raised £540 to save the club.
So, in 2024, with Watford fans watching their club struggling financially, maybe we should be preparing to think more imaginatively than street collections of spare change. Perhaps — to ensure a post-Pozzo future for Watford Football Club— the Watford Supporters Trust should be staging smoking concerts, whist drives and mathematics-based competitions.
We at the Watford Treasury are currently preparing a foxtrot that Tom Cleverly will absolutely adore.