Ann Swanson recently joined the exclusive duo of Graham Taylor and Sir Elton John in having a stand named in her honour. Jon Moonie explains why it was so very well deserved.
It’s been 38 years since I became a Junior Hornet and first met Ann Swanson. And as a full-grown man, and then a little ...
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Nick Catley on the man with magic in his boots
The overriding emotion – or mine, at least – when looking back on the career of a maverick is… what if? What if they could just have had the right attitude, focused on the game rather than the lifestyle, played for the good of the team rather than ...
Derrick Williams MBE explains how GT helped charity KitAid to reach their dream of one million items of donated kit
From the very start in 1998, Watford FC has always played an important part in the KitAid story. Our first big collection was at the Vic, and we received early publicity in the ma...
Richard White goes back 50 years...
Being a young teenage football supporter in the early 1970s was challenging, particularly if you were going to games on your own or with mates of a similar age. Terrace culture at the start of the decade saw the rise of skinheads with National Front allegianc...
Colin Payne goes back to a time when Watford played in Division Three South
As today’s Watford supporters alternate their weeks expressing overwrought raptures or apocalyptic fury depending upon a single result, spare a thought for fans from an altogether different era. Whereas today each post-...
Colin Payne on why he does like his eggs to be happy
They were tawdry times. How could they be anything else, with Laurence ‘Get skint – or die trying’ Bassini in charge? As the Pozzos grew ever closer to ‘liberating’ Vicarage Road, Baz took to his bunker, determined to fight on to the last, de...
Olly Wicken on his anxiety-inducing encounter with Roger Joslyn
It’s May 1979, and it’s the endof-season awards night for Gadeside Rangers Under-16s in a small sweaty clubhouse. A big name has arrived to present the medals – the man who, almost single-handedly, has just dragged an exhausted Wat...
Gladys Protheroe on the joys of visiting Vicarage Road as a teenage boy
At 13 years of age, my friend Clive and I were self-proclaimed minor outlaws. The Butch and Sundance of the Rookery. We wore Crombies and tonic trousers rather than Stetsons and gun belts, but the similarities were, we beli...
Geoff Wicken on a chance meeting in WH Smith
Unremarkable. That’s a word you might use to describe John Stirk’s Watford career. He played at right-back for one season, and I don’t recall him doing anything particularly memorable. No slaloming runs up the wing, no dreadful clangers at the back. ...
Jack Ottman looks back at 2014/15 comparing it to the then promotion season of 2020/21
Over the course of a promotion-chasing campaign, you often try to find comparisons between the current year and other successful seasons, to convince yourself that this one will end just as well.
However, fo...
Colin Payne on a debut, a farewell and his own big claim to fame
6 May 2001 is a date that is embedded in Watford’s history for one very obvious reason. It was a day that many remember with both fondness and immense sadness, for it would see Graham Taylor say goodbye to Watford Football Club. O...
Nick Catley ponders Tony Crane’s undeserved place in the record books
The autumn of 2000 was one of those occasional times where it feels the world has slipped slightly from its moorings (albeit in a way that would make a time traveller from the Covid era smile wryly, then laugh hollowly). Fuel...