Olly Wicken remembers the 1981/82 season
What will you remember about the 2020/21 season, Olly?
I watched every game on a screen. I was an ever-present, in that respect. But I won’t recall the details, no matter how hard I try. I couldn’t tell the games apart – even while they were happening.
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Nick Catley looks at what makes going to football special
I never read the Chronicles of Narnia series as a child. Partly this was because I didn’t want to be subject to the treatment handed out to a poor kid on my FA Fun Week – a coaching course designed to get us out of our parents’ hair for ...
Geoff Wicken recounts the 1977/78 season
“When is the earliest in a season you have known we were going up?”, asked the co-editor. Simple: it was the first week of October.
Graham Taylor had taken over in the summer of 1977, and things at Vicarage Road were changing. His remarks delivered via t...
Nick Catley looks at what makes going to football special
I lived in Watford, once. It was only for five years (2000-2005, fairly unremarkable ones for the team), but it was the fulfilment of a childhood ambition. Walking to the ground, getting back through the door at 5:15, picking up the Watf...
Mark Harrowell on the 1978/79 season
January 1979, Elvis Costello releases his third album, Armed Forces. Opening lyric: “Oh I just don’t know where to begin”. Elvis, I know exactly how you feel.
If you were a 15-year-old male in Croxley Green in 1978, there were pretty much only three places y...
'Safe hands' Geoff Wickens clings onto an outside edge.
Have you ever wondered how a top- level professional footballer might spend a summer Sunday afternoon? I suppose Instagram feeds could provide the answer, as would the national media if his behaviour on a southern European holiday island w...
Colin Payne doesn't understand the game, but he loves his wingers
I have a confession, quite a major one for someone so heavily involved in the production of a football fanzine (take a deep breath Colin, here goes, just say it)… I don’t really understand the game!
Of course I get the rudimental...
Nick Catley remembers the Family Terrace, and how Graham Taylor helped finance it
Watford’s role as a family club, epitomised by the opening of the first designated family area in the country in 1979 (as opposed to boys’ pens), is well documented and remembered. Slightly less celebrated, outsid...
Nick Catley on Watford's seeming inability to win that last game of the season
The Pozzo years have, indisputably, been a golden era for the club – one of very few not presided over by Graham Taylor. In living memory, you could potentially add the Holton and Furphy eras, and not much else. And...
Richard White travels to Denmark... For a pre-season friendly
The Hornets were on the crest of a wave in the summer of 2006, having powered past Leeds United in the Championship play-off game at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff on 21 May, and all eyes were on rookie manager Aidy Boothroyd to s...
Nick Catley on why The Watford Book of Soccer still has a place on his bookshelf
Edmund Blackadder (OK, Rowan Atkinson), on surveying his staff after his appointment as Lord High Executioner, said to his gaoler: “You are to be congratulated, my friend. We live in an age where illness and deform...
Geoff Wicken discusses domestic duties with one of our finest centre-backs
When you cross paths with a professional footballer – with any celebrity, probably – there are certain rules you feel you should follow. If making eye contact, a cursory nod seems appropriate: it shows you’ve recognized ...