Following Home and Away

Hello and welcome to Oh My Word, the podcast about Watford in the '90s with Matt and Michael. This week we're not going to be going through one of the seasons, we're actually going to take a slightly different approach. We're joined by Pete Fincham, who's a lifelong Watford fan. I'm sure will be familiar to many of the tens of listeners that we have in our podcast. Probably some of them know Pete, but we really wanted to share some of Pete's experiences as a Watford fan in the '90s the good and the bad, and particularly focus on what life was like following Watford away from home during this period. We talked about in a previous episode, we talked quite a lot about the Watford sort of match day at Vicarage Road in the '90s, and some of those, you know, sights, sounds, characters.

But in this episode, we really want to try and dig into a bit more what it was like going on the road with Watford around the country, you know, what the experiences was like there, the experiences of the fans, the stadiums, and the good and the bad experiences that Pete and others had. So, Pete, welcome to the show.

Hi, it's really, really great to be here. Thanks for inviting me on.

No, thank you. And I think, you know, you've already been supporting and contributing to the podcast so far, which we really appreciate. So it's great to have you on and have a chat. Maybe we should start, Pete, with where you sort of— the story begins, I suppose, in the '90s. Obviously, you were a Watford fan from quite a young age, but tell us a bit about sort of how you started to get more closely involved with the club during the '90s and how that came about.

It really wasn't until my sixth form that I got Saturday afternoons to myself because I went to a school in Berkhamsted and they rigorously made us go to school Saturdays, and Saturday afternoons was for games. And it wasn't until the lower sixth and upper sixth where you could almost extricate yourself by being a little bit rubbish. And get on with get on with your own life. So I'd been going consistently since the early '80s when I could relatives and friends. By the time I turned— so I think my 16th birthday was at 7-2 against Bradford in '89, right? And but after that I started going a lot more regularly. And then by the 6th year '91-2 season, I moved back to Watford from the lofty distance of Hemel Hempstead.

And the option came up from a conversation of being a part of the Matchday Lottery sales team. Which was just an amazing opportunity because got in for free access all areas. You get to new people really, really quickly. And actually, some of the time you're going from the game— actually, that season you would go from the game and often go for a drink with some of the players. Such was the tangible relationship between the staff who would just wander out of the matchday offices after the game, go into the old Supporters Club on Occupation Road, and there'd be someone in there who'd been playing 3 hours earlier. So it was a bizarrely tight set of relationships, and I became intoxicated by it. Quite literally in some cases.

But I loved it. I loved the fact that I could wander down the club any time of day or night and there'd be someone there who would just have a chat with you, whether it be Les Simmons part of the ground staff, some of the management team. At the time it was Taylor and Perryman who were in there, and people would just talk. They would be happily passing the time of day with you while you'd sit back. And I, age 17, when I started working for the club completely fell in love with not just what I watched on a Saturday, but the whole institution of the place. Even though actually, administratively, it was in one of its darkest periods, I still felt the fabric of the club was still very linked to the legacy of GT and the wonderful things that he'd done.

Sounds a lot more like a club, you know, Watford Football Club, and it sounds like club is the operating word there, sounds like, from your relationship with people.

Yeah, you know, the supporters club underneath Occupation Road by the old East Stand, it was just an old typical working men's club, and then people would go from there to the Red Lion. It was all the same sort of people in it. It was almost— you could have transplanted it to any smallish town in the whole country. I mean, it was not dissimilar to going to Rotherham, for example, a few years later. It was exactly the same fabric, the same faces, the same dismal pints, the lack of creativity, spirits. And then everybody would go to, was it Kudos? Oh yeah, on a Saturday night.

And the relationship between staff, players, fans, it was a lot tighter because there was, I come back to the word tangible relationship between people. And also you'd see the kids coming through and roughly my age at the time. So Darren Bazeley's not much older than me and I'm still in contact with people like that today because I saw them come through through their youth periods, make the first team, move on, and then with the advent of the internet, communications have been so much easier that in later years people come back and if I see them around the place, you know, we'll always have a kind word and reflect on them days.

Were any of those youth team players down at Kudos as well?

All of them were.

All of them. Johnson's got sacked.

Yeah, they were great, they were great days. I mean, there was David James who was, you know, clearly a cut above from a very young age, but then Drysdale and Ashby, they were two of the sort of more regulars. There was a distinct lack of professionalism, it's got to be said. But we were only a couple of years or after the sort of the era of Nigel Callaghan and those, that sort of era. I mean, mid-'80s, it was the Mo Johnston, George Reilly, John Barnes, Luther Blissett type of show. And the stories they had were far bluer than anything that went on in the '90s. So yeah, we have been getting progressively more sane.

Yeah, but I do, I do think the '90s was— yeah, certainly the first half of the '90s is— there's a sort of a long tail from the '80s going in there where that the professionalism that you associate with all the money coming in, that was still— it was— there was still quite a— that sort of slightly slapdash amateurish and, you know, approach from a lot of clubs was still— I suppose especially in once you went below the top flight as well. I mean, they were being run, and Watford was being still being run on a shoestring, wasn't at that time in terms of the actual budget that went into the club and the thing? Because what you're basically describing sounds like these days that's the kind of thing that people get involved in their local non-league club or sort of amateur clubs to where they want to sort of be involved in something a bit more community-minded or something like that, where, where you can do all sorts of jobs and do different— but this was a professional football club that had only recently been in the top flight, and then you said you're just sort of hanging out with them and getting to know everyone and getting involved in the, you know.

So in the middle, in the mid-'90s, we had Nathan Lowndes, this hot prospect. I think we got him from Leeds for about 5 grand, and he only ever made, I think it was something like 4 substitute appearances for us. But even so, you know, we paid money for this guy. That was the season we also signed Steve Talboys rest in peace. Yeah but Lowndes, I remember being in the post office buying my car tax, and he was buying— back in the day, I'm not sure how it works now, but you could buy 6 months or you could buy a year. And he was buying 6 months because he couldn't afford the year. And that was how, that was how kind of not affluent people on the fringe of a first-team club in— what was it then, League One or Division Two, whatever we're going to call it— that's how, that's how it was.

There was not a lot of money flashing about the place. No players who were a little bit more sensible, they had a decent house and they had a few things that came with it, but there wasn't the money that flooded the game sort of at our level, probably from maybe '99 onwards. There wasn't that right up until that point. We had a massive disparity when Helguson signed for us in January 2000. He completely broke the wage structure. There wasn't anyone who was vaguely near him. At that point.

Maybe now Wooter we'd signed a few months before.

Yeah, no, that's interesting. I think, you know, we've talked about that a little bit so far in terms of the budgets that managers throughout the decade were working with. And obviously we've gone through Perryman and Roeder primarily so far, but generally they were signing players for, you know, for the first team for sort of 30, 40, 50 grand, and they were expected to be first team players. So those were sort of fees that, you know, they were working with. And I think, Matt, you mentioned previously that, was it, Hessenthaler took, essentially took a wage cut to come and play for Watford initially because he was working full-time as a builder and actually getting his contract at Watford, he was probably not earning as much. Yeah, that's the reality of what the playing staff and the conditions were like, I suppose.

I think, yeah, I think that's interesting, Pete, what you're saying is, you know, there's this sense that the people you're watching on the pitch, you know, they earn probably more than you, but probably not that much more than you. Is that fair? And then later in the decade, I guess it's gone up to like them earning sort of 10 times as much as you.

I'm gonna throw in a little fact anecdote, partly from memory, partly because I've got access to Google. And the unfortunate side effect of the win at Port Vale in '99 was Paul Robinson's tackle on Stuart Talbot. While it didn't end Stuart's career, it certainly hampered it, and there was a result in legal action where in April 2000, when it finally went to court, the average championship wage at that time was £128,000. £128,000. Let's just say in today's money with the inflation, it's not far off £200,000, maybe, maybe a little bit more. There are plenty of people sitting around us in the Rookery who are on that money.

Yeah, it might seem an absurd amount of money given the average wage, but now you look at that £128,000 or £200,000, that's a couple of weeks of our top earners. And we were in the Championship last year, and it's when Ramon Vega became the first player in our history to earn a million pound a year. He was on £19,500 a week just to make it the million pound a year. And we had all, I think, about 6 different players between £10,000 and £20,000. No wonder we almost went under at that point, because we suddenly went from this £128,000 a year times by 8 9 factor. The infrastructure, the mechanism of not just the club but of the game and the community could not cope with that sudden transition between have a bit and have so much. And it keeps on growing, and to the game's detriment, absolutely to the game's detriment.

Let's talk a bit more, Pete, about. You got very heavily involved in your, you know latter, your A-level years and started to get much closer to the club. What was going on around the time that, you know, when you finished your A-levels and were thinking about going off to university? And, you know, what was going on? What year are we talking about then? And what was going— what was your level of involvement like with the club at that stage?

Well, I was still working match days and continue to do so for Well, for pretty much my whole university period when I was coming back. So '91/'92 was my A-level year, it was terrific and I finished off with that bizarre 5-2 against Bristol City where, was it, Allison and Atteveld and Aizlewood all got sent off. There was a bizarre shot from Gibbs that barely hit the back of the net although being struck from 30 yards. And Luther, of course, his final goal for Watford. So that went off, and then we had the implementation of the backpass rule the following season, and Perry Suckling on the first game of the season against Millwall, did a— it was, it was an absolute horrible— I think he conceded, was it McGinley?

Yeah, there was a couple of absolute car crashes in that one where the backpass rule came in. I think both keepers had an absolute shocker in that game.

But I went off to uni on the day of Swindon Town away in October 1992, which of course we lost, and of course Furlong scored. But very quickly it became so easy to get to these sort of games that I'd never really dreamed of going to if I was in Hertfordshire. Up until that point we'd done London away games. I think we'd gone sort of Cambridge and all around that sort of the below the M6 area. And then suddenly I get this opportunity because I was studying up in Hull, and so I got the Barnsley 1-0 on the 7th of November '92, where Hessenthaler scored with an absolute fluke. And then a few days later I came to the home game against Leeds, which was quite something. But over that period we'd go to just rock up, we get a carload of us and we At uni, you had them, the university associations, which gave us great funding opportunities.

So if you've got enough of us together, we'd almost have a car paid for by the uni funds. So we'd go to Wolves, would be Wolves and West Brom, and then up to Sunderland and all over the place. It was absolutely magnificent because there'd be hardly anyone there. And this was a season when, although Newcastle were really, really giving it some Newcastle's actual position in the, in the world was not that, was not that great. They were still, they were still sort of struggling, struggling upwards. And I just found it, I found it magnificent because you turn up and you'd see the same souls, often most of them still going now. And you'd see the coaches pull in, you'd go to a pub and there'd be a lot of intermingling between home and away fans.

You don't have to worry about tickets, you just rock up and pay on the turnstiles. And the other thing is there was a mass of free tickets going around because the players would still have their players' comps, but of course players' wives in those days, they weren't travelling to Barnsley on a Saturday. They were— they weren't going to be going up to Grimsby. So there was all these free tickets being divvied out before a game. So even though it was only about a fiver to get in and there would only be about 150 of us there, although at Barnsley game I think we did a count and it was about 75. But there would be plenty of people in there free, plenty of people in there who'd were students like ourselves. Because it wasn't— the country wasn't flush, you know.

People didn't have the money that they do now. God knows how or why, considering the expense, but people didn't have the money. And also, after a fairly dismal 5 or 6 years, we really were on our arses as a club. We were down to the level— I mean, '91, '92, we got 1,700 for that ZDS game. Against Southend. I mean, you could have counted every one of them. They'd only opened two stands.

Do you think those— do you think also there's the economics of it at the time in terms of, yeah, the country had been in a recession, but also the actual reputation of football at the time was not what it is now? It's certainly in that early '90s, like, I mean, it wouldn't be kids going.

There was, there was very rarely any sort of dad with his boys. I mean, there was, there was one I remember who had a couple of sons. He would have his sons with him everywhere, and at home games he also had his wife and daughter. He's sadly no longer with us, as is so often the case when you get to our age. But you'd always see him, like whether you go to Bolton, you'd see him at Manchester train station. Burnley, exactly the same. Liverpool, exactly the same.

And he was— I said, how do you manage to do it? Well, rules is rules. I go to football, he comes to football. But yeah, there weren't any kids. So now if we had a next season when we've got an away game at, let's just say Sheffield United, there'll be tonnes of fathers and tonnes of mothers with their kids. There was none of that, really, really wasn't. And part of that was because it was the transition from the terraces as well.

Terraces were fairly unforgiving for the kids. On away games, especially if there was a lot of people going. But then the onset of the all-seater stadium, much as it had its downside, has really made it a very different kind of crowd and experience. And I think actually that's probably a good thing because it's, it's been brilliant as a parent to be able to just take your kids and know you're entirely safe. And the reputation of Watford's always been very friendly. We had a few naughty boys, we're always going to have a few naughty boys because that's just society, but it wasn't something that was associated with the club. And therefore we've always been a safe haven for people who just want to go and watch the game and enjoy the banter.

I mean, I wasn't going to away games at that time. I probably started sort of a few years later, started going to my first away games, but it felt even— it feels like other teams never really saw Watford as a club that they would have a bit of needle with their fans, or there wasn't that. I guess like, that wasn't to say that you would— they wouldn't— there wouldn't be any, like you say, any banter with, you know, and back and forth once you're inside the stadium. But I don't think other clubs were looking at Watford fans and thinking, you know, they needed to prove themselves against Watford in that way, because Watford weren't seen as being sort of that sort of club, were they?

In the words of David Connolly, they had nothing to prove at that level.

Yeah, basically. I've never forgiven him. I've never forgiven him. I don't think many people have. I think in terms of the what you were talking about was interesting about this. Yeah, the state of the stadiums and the fact that you didn't see many kids there, and it was sparsely populated away terraces for Watford. Maybe we could talk a bit more about how you started to, yeah, I suppose, recognise some of the fellow band of hardy travellers that would be at those games.

So there was always distinct groups of people. There were groups of students who had been, who were at university locally. There was the Mad Old Ducks who would, and still go, on the club coaches who even if the game was in Hemel, would still get a club coach. Such is the sort of, you know, passion for routine and formality. There was the younger lads who would sort of go together on the train and, you know, be a day out, wouldn't it? And then there was the sort of the odd wonderful characters that really make up our club. So of course people like Don Fraser, who I think in the early '90s he was still using his sticks and he was still up on his haunches, but as time's been kind of cruel, has ended up— he was known at the start of the internet as Cybersticks, self-named, and then his— I'm not entirely sure we should use the name that he's awarded himself around the time he went in the wheelchair, but, you know, wonderful guy, he still goes.

He actually won the BBC, I think it was, Supporter of the Season owing to a fairly compelling campaign that we run to get him voted up as the BBC Supporter of the Season around, I think it was around 2006, something like that. Then there was some other strange, I mean, I think we've touched on Wolfie, and people and the old git. I mean, old git, he was a wonderful, wonderful bloke. I mean, didn't have a bad word to say about anyone and sort of always saw his role as chief steward in the north stand in a slightly comedic way. And then Wolfie, who obviously with the Teen Wolf film and his sort of ever-increasing facial hair and the crowd, "Awoo!" He loved it. I mean, let's face it. I mean, if you look like a werewolf, you'd want people to laugh at that.

But of course, then the much, the much missed Cigar Man, I think, needs a mention here because this was a guy who went to every game home and away. He was very quiet, he hung out on his own, he trotted along and then. He always had a, always had a big fat cigar on the go, and that literally, that was probably more expensive than his entire wardrobe because he wasn't a well, he wasn't a well-dressed man. And as it turns out, he wasn't a well man either, to the point that we were away at Barnsley in September '94. Memorable only for it being Kenny Sansom's only appearance. Another man who probably his best days were long past him. Mooney got sent off right at the end for having a shot on goal a moment after the whistle had gone, so got sent off for a second bookable.

Cigar Man wasn't there, and no one could remember the last time Cigar Man wasn't there. Such was the few amount— now they put you behind the goal at Barnsley. Back then there were so few of us, we were stuck up in the top left-hand corner of their main stand. I mean, there was no one there, but Cigar Man wasn't there. And someone said, I heard he went into hospital and he's dead. It was like, oh my word, oh, that's really bad. So we sort of had this impromptu minute's silence, which you couldn't really tell it apart from a non-minute's silence, such was the bad game.

But one of the guys in the fanzine at the time, you know, we clap your hands. Then said, oh well, this is, this is dreadful, we need to write an obituary for him. And we had a game the following Saturday against Luton, which was Gary Fitzgerald's one and only appearance. We made a theme of that at that time, people who'd only have one appearance. Warren Neill, remember him? Anyway, so we had this, we had the game against Luton, obviously a big derby, everyone's getting geared up for it. People are selling fanzines in the street, and in their haste they put a one-page addition to the fanzine which was a tribute to Cigar Man for his years of loyal service to the club.

He'll be long missed. In memoriam. In memoriam indeed. And Richard Walker, who's now one of the, one of the club leading community executive people, and a great man and a great friend, was selling his fanzines, and all of a sudden he got tapped on the shoulder, and it's Cigar Man holding his obituary going, I'm not dead! And he went into that— to then the North Stand at Vicarage Road end, and he's like, what are you doing? He did it!

It was like— it was the greatest moment in his life. He'd had recognition from 2,000 people going cigar, cig- -richie! Go, 'I'll be here, I'm still here, I'll give you— I'll see you all off, I tell you.' And he's chomping on this blooming cigar, giving it some. And of course we lost 4-2 and it was all— then we lost 6-3 to Spurs, but he's still wandering up and down Vicarage Road. 'I'm still going, you're never gonna take me.' but that's what happened when someone like that would miss a game. You assumed not that they missed a game, you assumed that they were dead.

That's a brilliant— I love that.

You know, 30 years on, he's— he is probably dead, but probably gonna get a message over Twitter, 'I'm not dead.'.

Oh, so I mean, the fact that they managed to get a Rush out an obituary for him a special insert, I mean, I guess shows that the regard in which Cigar Man was held by the faithful at that time.

You can literally imagine Matt Bento and Dave Messenger the night before putting in sort of A5 inserts into the 800 fanzines they've got to sell, and then look on their face, it's like, oh, what have we done that for? When he when he turned around.

I think that's really interesting in terms of you know, a small tight-knit group, like you say, you've seen the same people week in, week out, and people are noted by their absence, not by their presence. I think, like, you know, it's just, you know, you obviously can't do that now with thousands going away, but I think, I think more than, more than a lot else, that really signifies a transformation since, well, 30 years ago now, really, isn't it?

And I think that sense of community was so prevalent in this. There's a lot of people my age. I'm 48. There's a lot of people my age, probably disproportionate amount of people my age who still go religiously. And that's because we grew up in the '80s and we had our, our friends' years, you know, the years between leaving school and university and settling down, that kind of decade before it gets a bit serious. That was our decade.

And so we went from having, you know, being controlled and the Family Terrace and all the controls of the '80s, and that was great, but we learned our values. We learned our this is what you do, this is what you don't do, and by the way, we're all here to have a really good time. And then the '90s were the point where we sort of broke free a little bit, and the booze was flowing and the trains were running, and we could easily get in and get the free tickets, and we get to know people, and we'd all be part of a group and be part of a thing. And it was a thing that was undissipated by the modern world, as in it was almost a hark back to a yesteryear. Yeah I loved it. I loved it. I loved it with all my heart.

There's something also just about going away, isn't there? That obviously it's like there's, there's the travelling to these other towns and cities around the country, just being in other parts of the country, like, and then even more so probably when there's just a small band of you, but then when you actually. There's something that just adds a bit more excitement about going to someone else's stadium and being there and feeling like you've, you've almost got a job to do as a fan there because to represent the team and the club because they, you know, it feels a lot more important being on. I think that's probably still true for away fans now, but more so I think given the sort of circumstances you've described in terms of what the club was in, the state of the club was in, and the lack of, you know, investment and profile and just general, you know, fact that football to— by a lot of people had just sort of been completely forgotten. But I think for me, like, I just loved, you know, going away because it just, it was just, it was more exciting. Did you feel that as well, going away from home? Did it have any more different emotions, I suppose, that you'd feel from going to a home game?

I think at home there's a lot of people who are carrying the mantle and supporting the team, and, or in, you know, in recent years, to be honest, fairly, being fairly toxic a lot of the time. Away. You almost felt as though if you didn't turn up, why should the players? Because, okay, yeah, they're getting paid, but who are they doing it for? They're doing it to retain a league position, of course, but at the end of the day, it's an entertainment. And if they're not there to entertain their own fans, what's the point? And I always felt that I'd make more of an effort to get to the away games than the home games if there was a choice, because A, it's more of an experience, B, I know the roads of England like the back of my hand even now.

And you know, you sort of say, oh, how do you get to Port Vale? And all right, okay, well, if it's busy, you know, I'm not gonna go M6, I'm gonna go up the M1, across on the A50 under the— then in through the back roads into Burslem.

I've always thought they should include more football in GCSE and A-level geography. It's how I know my way around the country, it's all based around grounds. I know that, I remember a teacher being really impressed with me in secondary school because I knew the River Trent was in Nottingham, but based on what the cricket ground was called and what the stadiums and the football ground were called. I think it would make a big difference.

And you would know that the Larwood and Vose is right by the away end. Yeah. And it's a tremendous pub and it does a great jacket potato.

This is the stuff that should be on the curriculum. Pete, you spoke about. Why do the players do it away from home and the fans turning up? I mean, do you think in the '90s the players appreciated your efforts?

Yeah, I think they did. I mean, we were wretched away from home on the road. I mean, it was dreadful, absolutely appalling. Yeah, it was so rare that we got anything on the road during those seasons, and I think the players really, really did. Even, I mean, the West Brom away game, '93, '94, Soloman scored a cracker, Hessenthaler got sent off. 4-1, 4-1, The 4-1. Yeah, 95-6.

Foster 2, Ramage 2, my memory serves me correct. But the players, you know, we lost 4-1, everyone was humiliated. They nowadays, they'd have run off, they'd have just gone bang. They came over, they were, you know, bitterly apologetic. Actually, we— Hessenthaler got sent off, I think, 2-1 down. And it was a tight game and everyone was trying, and you could see that there was real effort. But the other thing was, I mean, the art of baiting the goalkeeper, one that's gone.

When the home goalkeeper would come down, you know, you'd have banter with them all game. And so there'd be this connection, and the home goalkeeper would often come down as well and say, you know, thanks, guy, that was a bit of fun. It was less serious. But players, I think they did really, really care. And part of the reason they really cared is because they knew 4 hours' time they were going to be in the same nightclub. And you know, there was very few places to hide. It wasn't like now where people would, you know, get on their jet and they'd fly back to their place in Spain, Mr. Deulofeu, for a weekend or something, or go into London to the sort of the VIP areas of clubs.

They were down Kudos, they were down was it in Hemel, La Mirage, or whatever it was there. And that's because that's where they lived. That is where they were. They were still in the community. Okay, so, you know, you'd have Ramage still up in Nottingham, and Jason Lee later on up in Nottingham. But largely, players were still around. They still married people who they'd been to school with.

They still married people from the terraces. I mean, It was, it was a far tighter community, so they knew they couldn't hide, and therefore they, even if they hadn't had the best of games, they still showed genuine appreciation and humility. I think that was, that was a big word, humility.

I guess it was different as well because they didn't have even if the fans had been giving them a bit of stick during the game, like you say, you didn't have— because you didn't have things like social media, you didn't have the internet, it wasn't as— it wouldn't get as toxic necessarily as it does now in terms of the abuse that gets sort of targeted at players, which I think is in part why you have that separation, and it has created a divide. And they are further away than ever from the fans really. I think they obviously, there's very carefully cultivated relationships between club and fans online but it's not anything like what you've been describing to us now in terms of the relationship that you had and the reciprocal relationship that the players have with the fans. I think that is, that's something that's irrevocably like changed, I think, there's no question about that. Should we do—.

I think going back, where it started and stopped was generally in the ground, because there wasn't those media— okay, so someone might write a letter to the Watford Observer. Oh, that would be damning. Because also, you know, if it was too rude, they wouldn't have printed it. So someone could have printed something to Watford Observer, and it wasn't really until the onset of the internet, and that really isn't— I mean, the '90s, we had the Watford mailing list set up in '94, but there's some very strict rules about abuse and whatever else, and some of the players were on there. I think Nigel Gibbs is still actually on the Watford mailing list. As he reads it and the club read it and people read. But you know, there are rules now.

It's— there's so many unregulated forums that people can do what they want. And Twitter, I mean, most players won't see what's tweeted about them. They probably just don't care enough. But the point is, it feeds toxic behaviour, and it then feeds what goes on in the ground. And people are almost coming in with like 10,000 negative tweets in their head and then exploding. And the first time anything goes wrong, it's like the art of privilege just kicks in and it's. It's deeply depressing, but that's not about football.

This is about society and about how the world has shifted away from reasonable behaviour, about consensus, and about forgiveness, really. I can't— I had a few run-ins with a couple of people down the years because actually I thought some of the things that might have been said was inappropriate. I mean, particularly David Connolly, which is well regarded and there were a couple of players probably I'd met, didn't have the time for because they were frankly very rude. I remember Jason Drysdale responded to his Gone But Not Forgotten comment. There was an article on Blind, Stupid and Desperate. Matt's told us about that. Yeah, about it.

Oh, well, I've got a bigger car than you, or I got a Ferrari, or whatever it was, you know. And they— that, well, that was his, that was his, you know, bye-bye then. Okay, fine. But I bet he's selling double glazing, and I bet he probably regrets it. But so what? I mean, that's just a bit of kind of— that's a bit of needle you'll get anywhere. But there wasn't this kind of viciousness that is infected not just people who go to football, but society in general, because they act with impunity.

There is no consequences to this. It's ghastly.

We've kind of talked about this in some of the other episodes about the— I think when we're talking about the match day, we were talking a bit about the back and forth that the crowd had with the players during the game and the banter and stuff. And that there is— it's definitely changed, I think, the atmosphere in the stadium. And probably because, yeah, it wasn't this— it— I think there's that point you said about seriousness. It wasn't as serious, I guess. Like, the whole sport wasn't as serious at the time, for me at least. I don't think it was like— I mean, not to say it was a joke either, because obviously it meant a lot to the fans at the time, and it was the players' lives as well. So they obviously were like, they were committed, but it wasn't, it wasn't a serious— things weren't— I think, you know, things that happen on the pitch weren't scrutinised the way that they are now as well, in terms of everything.

Every single moment that happens on the pitch now is broken down you know, every goal that's conceded, everyone's like looking at where the errors were made in the build-up.

And the idea, the idea that it could have been taken massively seriously when you have Steve Cherry goal. I mean, let's be honest, like the guy away— I remember away at Grimsby, it would have been about '95, '96, I think it was nil-nil. You know, Steve Cherry, Cherry, he's fatter than you and me. You know, he loved it. He did his whole Chubby Brown thing going. The game was dire. If I remember if I remember properly, there was basically no one there.

It was a, an appalling, appalling game, and it finished nil-nil. There was less than 4,000 there. I mean, something— it stuck in my mind, something like 3,993. Sticks in my mind is that attendance, and it being one of the most dismal, dismal moments of my sort of footballing life. But it was made all the better for Steve Cherry basically running around the running around the goal area doing Chubby Brown impressions. And just, it was funny. It was funny.

But I mean, that team, that team, from memory, was not a bad team. And at the, but at the back of it was Steve Cherry. I mean, there's no excuse.

Maybe let's talk about some of your best, the best and worst away days you can think of, Pete, from the, from the '90s. Let's start with— let's start with the worst. What are some of those worst?

Worst is one of the last games of the '90s and the Wimbledon 5-0. A game that we just couldn't have played any worse. Bearing in mind that was a team that did the double over us and got relegated.

Yeah, they got relegated as well, didn't they?

Yeah, it was so bad. There was not— it was freezing as well. I mean, Selhurst Park at the best of times is not good, but it was, it was so cold. There was 14,000 of them there, and you had, you had, we had a decent team, you know, Chamberlain, Cox, one of the first and only appearances of the wonderful Xavier Gravelaine, Hyde, Johnson, Ngonge, my lord, Robert Page, Steve Palmer, Paul Robinson. Mark Williams for his sins and Nordin Wooter. They were the ones who turned out that day. Not a bad team, not a team to lose 5-0, but they just went to pieces.

They went to pieces from the off, and it was, it was just the moment that you realised this wasn't going to happen. We bet we got one point, a couple of points actually, in the previous two months. We beat Chelsea in September, and then GT, after the 2-2 at Sheffield Wednesday, remember being on Match of the Day going, 'Ei, Daddy-o, we got a point.' I remember that. Oh man, and I, God rest his soul, Graham, love him, still love him. What are you thinking?

That was embarrassing.

I just waved the white flag at that point. Then we drew— when we drew to Newcastle, we lost to Sunderland, but that Wimbledon— then we lost to Birmingham, Everton, Tottenham, and then until the Southampton game that Gravelaine got his only 2 goals for the club. But that Wimbledon was just the worst. There was nothing good about it. It was awful. I hated it. And for that moment, I hated every single one in that ground as well.

It was just so lonely. And we all felt the same.

I remember that match. I don't I have a kind of, I have a false memory of watching it on TV, and I know that I didn't because I just checked and it was a 3 o'clock on Saturday kickoff, so I couldn't have done. But it was when I was at university, it was my first year of university, and I must have, instead of watching it on TV on the big screen, I must have just been watching Sky Sports or something like that. But I can remember it was, I just remember sinking, and just every time a goal went in just being increasingly resigned to the end result of that season and how things hadn't been going well. Wimbledon had a half-decent team at the time, you know, it was looking at the goal scorers now, Carl Cort, Robbie Keane, John Hartson, Jason Euell, Marcus Gayle, so that, you know, they had some players in that team. But I mean, Watford shouldn't have been— even with the team that we put out, we shouldn't have been going to Wimbledon and losing 5-0. But this is a team that beat Liverpool at Anfield.

Yeah, 4 months before, just a few months. Yeah, exactly. They could do it. Yeah, they could do it. Where the only real change was Mooney.

No, it's gonna say it's Mooney, isn't it?

Yeah, it was Mooney. I mean, there was obviously some tinkering in fact, Liverpool away. I mean, Dominic Foley was a sub and Clint Easton played as well. But it was Mooney and how that season might have been different if Tommy Ann got injured and coupled on at home to Chelsea.

What about in terms of away grounds the worst that you can think of from that time as well, in terms of worst experiences of just being in an away stadium?

Is there any that spring to mind there between '97 and the end of that Prem season, I think we did 65 different grounds. I did every single one of them and there was some, there were some horrors in there from the old school. But if you actually look back, you say, well, another, another sanitised Madejski Stadium or Millmoor? And for me, Millmoor every time. You know, it's just hilarious about being in a place like, being in a place like that. We, I mean, the old. The old Bolton ground was particularly unforgiving.

Turf Moor before it got done up. We— I mean, Noggin scored there, and I think it was 93-4, might have been 4-5. And we ran forward and we sort of put our hands on the cage thing. It was covered in anti-vandal paint, you know. We couldn't get anti-vandal paint off our hands for a week. It looked like we're sort of being done up for the Black and White Minstrel Show. But yeah, that's the sort of thing that we went with.

There was— West Brom have a cell in their away end underneath the ground. They have an actual cell because they anticipate on putting people in it.

I've never— don't think I've ever been in that ground, but I've been— gone up twice for games that have been called off. Well, the Hawthorns. Yeah, the Hawthorns. Yeah, made two trips to West Brom, they've both been postponed or abandoned while I've been in the car on the way up. So yeah, yet to see the cage, although I'm sure that's not there anymore.

There were some little 'uns, some really little places as well. I mean, Scarborough was hilarious up in that January '95, obviously not of our division, and you always get that in the FA Cup, at least you hope for that possibility. It was, it was quite something. I miss some of those old sprawling terraces like Roker Park. I miss the sort of terrace in St Andrew's. I mean, massive bundle. Where was it, '92, '93?

We drew 2-2 up there and huge bundle. We must have fallen 15 steps. How things didn't get broken, we don't know. But you've met those bundles on the away end, magnificent fun. I mean, just Crazy times. And then of course down you get sort of more dismal but equally appealing at Plymouth. I think Plymouth was our first game after Lady Diana died and went down there.

Kennedy scored a free kick and they ran us in the— they ran us through Victoria Park afterwards, as though Kennedy's free kick was a sign of disrespect. And oh it might be slightly after, but I want to sneak it in, is when Brighton played at the Withdean. I know it's a couple of years after, but being literally 100 and something metres behind the goal was something quite chronic. That's probably the worst ever football ground to watch at. But we went to different places, I mean, so much. And there's all these new grounds, I mean, the Derby and the Leicester, that's a completely different experience now from being down the side at Filbert Street, being in that sort of nice concourse. I loved some of those kind of rustic-y experiences of just going out there and cracking on, and especially the ones in the North, because they— there was a lack of pretension in the North a long time after that changed in the South.

And it just was just as a bit more fun.

Yeah, I had I think I just, you just jogged my memory of going to Bramall Lane for the start of the, I think it was the '94-'95 season where we lost, we lost 3-0. I'd gone up on the, that was when I started going away, but I'd gone up on the coaches for that one and had gone up like quite excited about being there for the start of the season and because Sheffield United were one of the fancied clubs. Who just come down. And yeah, we got absolutely played off the park and lost 3-0 in that game and barely, barely had a shot. But I also remember the thing that stuck in my— stuck in my memory from that was someone at the back of the away end lobbing a pie. And it— but it didn't make it like to the end of the stand and onto the pitch. It hit— came off the back of someone's head, sort of ricocheted off someone's head and exploded.

And this flying pie I got hit with a bit of pie debris. I remember having— feeling a bit of pie jelly on the side of my face and sort of brushing that off. But the bloke— there was a bloke in front of me who took a bit more of the full impact of it, and he was— yeah, he was not happy about that, I could say, as you wouldn't be if you're there to watch full match and you. Get clunked on the back of the head by your own fan, by your own fans lobbing a pie in disgust.

That was Mark Watson's last ever league start, that one.

Was it?

Yeah, but I don't know if you remember that Sheffield United were redeveloping their ground at the time, and Bassett had erected some kind of lookout post that they decked in camouflage.

I don't remember that.

As we looked, it was on the left-hand side of the pitch, so the main stand still existed and they'd knocked down the stand on the left-hand side, and Bassett walked out, and I think it was the first game of the season, so he sort of walked out like to the tune of Colonel Bogey, and had gone up and he climbed up a ladder and he'd gone into his lookout post, and they'd decked it out in camouflage. I really think my mind might be playing tricks on me, but who knows.

What about some of the best then, in terms of the away experiences that really are the most treasured ones for you?

So I've, I've mentioned the Liverpool 1-0 because it was completely unexpected, and winning at Anfield for the one and only time was something remarkably special. Dr. Duncan's, both before and after, we had a big day out, proper jolly boys out in that day. And Birmingham semi on penalties was something— I mean, you're all familiar with from the Rookery End podcast, which is, you know, very good. And they did a Birmingham special a season or so ago, and I remember just sort of revisiting my memory around that and just the, just the reaction of us all because it'd been— everything had been so unexpected that season. And as it got to— we— how we held on for a 1-0 defeat in that game, I'll never know. The emotion was incredible. And the Holdsworth sent off, and even then Birmingham kept on coming, and their crowd were amazing, and it was the most intimidating thing.

And they were lobbing stuff and singing stuff, and it just kept on going. And I remember Simon Devon, a longtime friend, he was standing there and got to penalties, and he just couldn't watch, you know. And he was like, Simon, You will stand, sir, and you will watch. You will face this like the rest of us. And I stood next to him at Wembley for the Deeney penalty in the semi-final a few years ago. I just grabbed his hand and I go, you'll stand, sir, and you'll watch. Like nothing's changed, you know, we're still some stupid little kids there bounding around in 1999 and Alec's heroics that game.

But there is only one game. There is only one game that sums up the '90s, or at least the early part of the '90s, as an away game, as an experience. And if I say that I had to borrow the university minibus in order to get to it, to drive down the A15 and ultimately end up on a Tuesday night in April 1994 at London Road, Peterborough.

Oh, okay, yeah.

With my long-term friend Craig Harrison, who was like, 'What we doing again?' 'You're coming to history,' and knowing he'd been to a number of different games that had invariably ended far from historically. With two of us in a 15-seat minibus, it was this complete joke, and I'd done two days of computer programming for the union in order to get sort of payment for this thing. And unfortunately, about an hour before we were due to go, all the computers crashed and there was no backup. So I was like, how am I going to get around this one? And I was like, I just will have to say it's all done. And I'm so glad I did because that game was ludicrous. Aidy Boothroyd was playing for.

For Peterborough that day, wasn't he?

Was he? I thought he was. I think we played him again in '96, and I think— did he score a penalty or miss a penalty against us?

I think he was off my radar, unfortunately, at that point.

I'm not sure, but yeah, no, he certainly, he certainly played against us in the '90s and possibly took a penalty. I might have made that up. We were all at that game, and Mike and I spoke about it well, we've spoken about it a lot, Mike, haven't we? We absolutely, absolutely loved that game. I hadn't been to many away games at the time, and I certainly hadn't been to many away games on a terrace. But I had the time of my life that night. I thought it was, it was, it was absolutely magical.

Loved every minute of it.

The bundle after bundle. And Dublin, when he put that in at the end, it was like there was no better feeling. I had a girlfriend at the time who was a Newcastle fan, and I couldn't imagine anything I ever did with her to be even on the same plane as that experience, you know. What a wonderful, wonderful evening that was. And I think, I think it turns out there was at least 15,000 Watford fans there by everyone who claims to have been there. It's pretty much, you know, there was sort of 47,000 at the 7-1 against Southampton.

I was going to say, that's the next, the previous generation's version of that, isn't it?

Yeah, I was at the Sunderland 8-0. But yeah, that '94, that evening, it remains just quite the most comically brilliant emotional night I've had following Watford. And, you know, the Birmingham semi and everything else that's come after that, it just doesn't compete. I don't know why, because I mean, we beat Peterborough, woo!

But then you were there, and you know what it meant. I completely agree. I think that's— that was our emotion of it, was that it was— because at the time it was like the biggest game in the universe because it was— it meant so much for both clubs. And I think that's why it was, you know, it's— it was such a big game for Watford and for Peterborough. And. Someone had to come out on top because, you know, a draw was no good really for either club. And to come out on top in that fashion and in such a, like, ludicrous fashion— because it was a ludicrous football match where you just thought anything could happen and pretty much anything did happen— it was— and then to come out the right side of that in one of those kind of roller coaster games, the lead changes hands a lot and they were—.

The quality so low, we could have lost that like, yeah, by a couple of goals, couldn't we? We could have won it by a couple of goals.

Yeah, I mean, the all— most of the goals are awful and but that just made it all the more fun, I think, because, you know, you just— it'd be like ball ricocheting 5 times on its way into the net and sort of trickling over the line. And it was— yeah, that was the first time I'd experienced that sort of like away end bundle. And it was, yeah, it was intoxicating. I think, I think that's the thing about an away— when you have an away experience, you can go away with a club like Watford a lot, and you can— the experiences of the actual match can be— a lot of them are going to be rubbish because they can be secondary, can't they? Yeah, because Watford don't, you know, they're usually up against it when they go away. And apart from the odd season we've had where we've got, you know, a promotion or something, where we've, you know, we've got a lot of good results on the road, but for a long period of our history, we've— going away with Watford has meant losing, and often losing badly. And so when you do get those, those moments, I think, where it all comes together and you come out the right side of it.

That's what sticks with you, and it's the fact that we all have such a treasured memory of that game. It would be— it's, yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing to then feel like you really feel like you've been part of something, and I guess that's what— that is ultimately what you follow a football club for. You get that, but no, that's a memory that you have for life, isn't it? It was absolutely fantastic.

Well, we're now talking nearly 30 years ago, yeah, and that is the defining memory, is that last moment of— I mean, I was right behind Lavin's goal, yeah but I was also therefore right behind sort of Dublin's goal as well. And the moment— the memory isn't watching Lavin's goal sort of screaming like a little grass cutter, it's the sort of chaos of Dublin and everything that went on before. Yeah, and everything went on after. And trying to find— trying to just sort of find myself and find my friends because we'd all become so separated by that bundle. And look at the great— the great changes in the game, for all their benefits, they'll never allow that kind of thing to be replaced. Because you'll get— you'll get your last-minute Deeneys against Leicester and whatever else, but you won't get that careering down 15 steps when you scored, landing with some sort of middle-aged man on top of you. It was just wonderful.

It was a different era, and I think all for 6 quid as well.

So I think one other thing we wanted to touch on, Pete, with you in terms of your involvement with the club and the different layers of involvement you've had over time was obviously you've been quite directly involved in actually working for them, but then you also were involved in. In the establishment of an independent supporters club in the mid-'90s. Do you want to tell us a bit about how and why you got involved in that and made that happen?

Yes, I'm very proud actually of some of the stuff that as a fan base we achieved during that era post-Hillsborough. And there was the FSA, Football Supporters Association, and that was always around a common theme about how fans can influence the game better, and there was all sorts of charters and correspondence with government and everything. And then the Taylor Report really did paint fans into quite an awful picture, which invigorated the FSA. But that was always around a common idea. Independent supporters associations were founded from sort of the earlier part of the '90s, sort of '92, '93. And we're trying to draw in fans from each club standing on the mandate of what their club needed. And what we had a problem, and we had a gaping chasm between Petchey and everybody else.

He would make decisions without— there was no consultation, there was no dialogue, there was, there was nothing. It just sort of happened. Being at university and being heavily involved in the FSA, I knew that when I was coming home in '95 that something had to be started to at least start a dialogue with the club. Although I don't think the club themselves took it particularly seriously at the start, and to be fair, you know, I was 21, quite verbose, and had very little subtlety. At the same time, the points that were being made is that, you know, you could do a lot worse than actually talk to us. You could do a lot worse than actually have a consultation. And because immediately some of the people who were joining were lawyers and accountants and people who wanted to just sort of pay their few quid and actually be part of something that said, actually, we, if we come together, we've got a better chance of being heard.

And there was a lot of people with a lot of skills. And although things were born around inexperience and it wasn't particularly well run we didn't even know— I don't even think we had a computer. There was no internet for communications. I think one person might have had email. And the— but it actually did invigorate people to have a discussion. It gave us a forum, it gave us a platform. And then when Taylor came back in the February, he phoned me at work Look.

And was like, look, I'd known him as a kid we'd lived a couple of roads apart. And he said, what's all this about? Why do you need it? And I said, well, come in and have a chat. And he actually took us quite seriously. He was very pro the fan base being represented in discussions. And so before the Charlton game in '96, there was a meeting in his office, and there was a couple of guys, it was Doug and Eddie Brimson and there was a couple of others, someone who ran the coaches and a few others in there.

And I was in there with one of the other people who were running WISA, just to say, look, enough's enough, we need a proper dialogue around these things. You've got a national mandate. The Labour Party at the time were doing a lot of stuff around appealing to the football supporting community about fans' parliaments and fan mandates. And Claire Ward who is the girl who got the— became MP for Watford in, I think, '97, one of the Blairite intake was also behind what we were trying to do and saying, actually, look, this is quite serious. And now you see, now the whole— the FSA with the FSF and all the other iterations of that have come out of it. And then that led to the Supporters' Trusts. And the Supporters' Trust, you know, they're embedded in universities, they're a major place for research.

Now. And I think they've provided certainly in the lower echelons, I mean the fan-owned clubs of Wimbledon and Exeter, this is all spawned from the originally the FSA, then you have the independent supporters associations, and then the trust. And I stand by the fact that if it wasn't for the Watford Supporters Trust, our club would not have come out of the perils that they were in the early 2000s because we pulled the fan base together, not only in terms of getting all the proxies together and raising actual real money for the club to help them out of various situations, but we kept fans on side by working with the club to ensure that the messaging was tolerable, was correct, we looked, we had people who were accountants and again lawyers supporting the club with their due diligence as they were trying to raise money. And much as I'm sure revisionists will always say, oh well, it would have happened anyway, when the club has been in its darkest hours, the fans of our club have stood up and have actually turned around and said, we will help you because this is our club. And they were the noises we were making. They were the efforts we were making.

There was some of us, we took 6 months off work to try and make a difference when the club was on its arse after the Vialli and the whole ITV Digital thing. We took time out of our lives to make sure that what was going on was in the best interest of the future and that we weren't all just going to end up going down and down and down, which could have easily happened. And the likes of Tim Shaw, remarkable individuals at the top of our club, remarkable individuals. They put their personal wealth in beyond any reasonable level to ensure that our club survived. But they couldn't have done it without a cooperative association with the fans. And people don't always stand up and put themselves forward. I did that.

I didn't do it for my own benefit. I did it because I think it was the thing that was right to do. And I love the fact that I can proudly turn around and say I tried to make a difference. And 30 years on, 20 years on, myself and a bunch of people who were at the time looking around going, what on earth can we do? We're now looking at the same sort of situation going, it's a little bit fishy right now. Yeah, there's a few problems. There's Supporters Trust AGM for the first time in God knows how long in a couple of weeks, which I'm eagerly looking forward to because actually now's the time for fans to come together, not to be driven apart.

Because let's face it's all well and good saying we want Pozzo out. Oh, and what And what? In my naivety, you know, we want Petchey out, and what? What happens then? Because we didn't have an answer. We want— all we wanted was a dialogue, and we didn't want season ticket prices to go from £199 to £320 without explanation. So they did, they explained it, they gave us cause for hope, and they had that dialogue, and they would phone up.

And frankly, I don't buy all this business about, oh, where there's only select group of people who've been invited into this latest forum. So what? It's, it's an attempt to make a difference. It's an attempt to have a dialogue. You have a dialogue with too many people, the dialogue becomes dissipated, the dialogue becomes pointless because it stops being dialogue. You don't make any progress, it just becomes a rabble. And so I think the club are doing entirely the right thing at the moment by having a limited dialogue with people.

It makes no odds if you're going to talk from, you know, with Stephen from Sutton because he happens to have been on WML and Twitter and all these other things, and he joins 17 different clubs. Your voice is not going to be unique. So get people with a mandate, get people with a constitution, get people who've got an objective, bring them together and try and make a difference. There's plenty of fans out there, you know. We have, again, some of the most impressive people in society within our fan base. Whether it be politicians, whether it be businessmen. You know, you've got Miles, who I sat next to for donkeys years, who runs one of the biggest sports— one of the biggest computer game companies in the world.

You know, people like that within our fan base, tap into those people and get support. You don't need to be dialoguing with people who abuse you all the time. And I think what happened with WISA, you know, again, it was, it was amateur hour and what, who we were. We didn't have any experience, but we were just trying to do something different. We tapped into the national movement and it was, it was well regarded and a lot of good things came out of all that. And then I got some amazing friends as well when WIFC, Watford Internet Football Club, started. Came out of the whole mailing list age and the first websites.

That club's still going, it's now in its 25th season, 26th season. We've won National Team of the Year on a number of occasions just for the ethos, just for the behaviour of the club, the welcoming nature. You host your away fans, it's old school but it's wonderful and it still goes. And these The kids who are now playing for that team, they take forward the hope, those values that we took from Graham Taylor back in the day. We took what was right, we implemented it in the '90s, and that still carries on, and we can look very proudly at our legacy.

And that's about doing things properly, isn't it, Pete?

Yeah, rules is rules, right is right, and I don't believe there is a different way in football. Football's a game for the masses, it's a community thing, it is something that you hold up and say, this is my team, this is my community, this is who I am. I was in Italy last week and I was talking to a guy in a queue to see the Statue of David. Guess who he supports? Watford. His first game was that 4-0 wretched game at Palace in '96. First and only person I spoke to in Florence.

And he was there with his girlfriend, he's like, oh my God, oh dear me. But the point is You know, and he's talking about stuff that brought him into it. He's a bit younger than me, a bit younger than you, but he was talking about what brings him into it. And if we can look proudly at, you know, our children and say we're still flowing down that ethos in years to come, and then they'll have children and they'll have children and the club is still going to be there. And we can't change society, we can't make society stop and just sort of hang on to the idea of rolling down a terrace in '94 at Peterborough. But what we can do is say you behave well, you act responsibly, you act in the best interest of your club, you love your club, you respect the players, and they will respect you back. If that's what we have to try and hold on to keep this great game alive, then so be it.

But I love Watford, I love Watford Football Club, and I love my friends and everything that's come out of it. I love this podcast because it's got me so welled up listening to some of these memories, and thank you so much for doing it because it's beautiful, it really is. But we are, we are a very special club. We should never forget that. And we all come and go and we live our lives, invariably meet women, settle down, and then find it a bit more difficult. But thank you for doing this.

You're very welcome, Pete. I think it's been a lot. I mean, I think we'd echo all of your sentiments about what the club means to us. I mean, we kind of joke about it as well, don't we, Matt, that even though we're sort of fixated on this particular decade, it's where we sort of fell in love with the club, but even now, like, in our 40s can't quite let the addiction of Watford go. And it's still like, I still get, still get really, still find myself getting really annoyed on a Saturday.

Like, the club still consumes and indeed pollutes my Saturdays most weeks.

Yeah, basically, even though neither of us are able to get to too many games at the moment, but it still has its claws into us, and once it does, yeah, I mean, I know everyone says that they're, you know, everyone will talk about their own club probably in, you know, revered tones, but I do, yeah, I think that some of the stuff you've been talking about today definitely brings to life like what an absurd and brilliant football club Watford is and hopefully continues to be over the next you know, over the decades to come.

Tell you one last, one last thing. When we play our reserve games at Northwood in the '90s, the mid-'90s, Graham Taylor used to, he used to turn up to pretty much every, every one of them to see probably how Richard Flash was getting on. And but he used to stand in the same place, which was a corner up near the cemetery, and he would stand there and there was rules around, around Graham. They were unspoken rules, but they were rules nevertheless. And he would be— he'd rock up and he would stand there. And as you'd walk around the ground, sort of, you know, because there's no point in standing still on those nights.

And as you'd walk around, he would sort of get eye contact with you and sort of with his eyes he would invite you in for a chat. It would be— he would be interrupted constantly by people who would, you know, were not people he would want to necessarily talk a massive amount to. But he would nevertheless give everybody the time of day. But then he'd wait and then he'd feed you something. He'd feed you something really interesting like you just— how old, Peter? You just watch out for that number 3 we've got from Notts County. I tell you, he's going to be really something.

And there'll be Sam Allardyce over there who just sold Peter Kennedy to us. And it— what he meant was, go on, go and wind Sam up because he's right lost some money on that guy. But it would be just like that. He would just feed you little snippets. And the great, the great Graham Taylor for me was 97, and 3 of us— Aidy Spender, Don Fraser, and I— decided we were going to go to Lithuania on a preseason tour. We were the only 3 fans who went. And we got to Heathrow and there was only one flight a day and we'd only decided with a couple of days notice to go.

And we got to there and he's like, oh my God, Peter, what are you doing here? For God's sake, this is like a kick around. We weren't expecting anyone to come out here anyway. But we decided to come anyway. So he's, he's wonderful. Anyway, little did we know, we get to Vilnius and we've got to get to Kaunas and it was like late evening, and he's like, how on earth are you lot getting up to Kaunas? We've got a game to play.

Where's Kaunas? Not a clue, not a clue. He goes, jump on then. And it— so the team bus is there. Well, there's two of us, Aidy and I, and then Don's in a wheelchair. So then you've got players lifted a guy in a wheelchair onto the team bus to take him up to Kaunas. The next day, well, we'd had a— we hadn't found a hotel.

We'd end up sleeping the night on the floor of the taxi driver's place. And but anyway, we'd gone in back into town and we were there and we'd had a drink and the game is at 4 o'clock. Anyway, this, the pitch, the stadium in Kaunas is right up the, right up a hill, and it would have taken us an hour to push Don up there. Anyway, so we're sort of lingering around having another drink and Taylor's like, right, come on you get. So puts us on the team coach, getting there, and as we get up there, Aidy's carrying a video camera And we get off with that BBC. They treated us honestly, they gave us access to all areas. And the people who didn't speak any English, and he was like pretending that we were with the BBC, we had a video camera.

I'd forgotten his charger, so the video camera ran out midway through the first half, but we carried on, carried on doing it anyway. Anyway, so we were, we were royally robbed in a game, and it turned out the game was actually a bit rigged. Because they wanted the local team to be playing Alania Vladikavkaz in a televised final the next day. So we'd lost this on dubious last-minute nonsense, and we were giving the referee a pennant from Watford that Graham Taylor had given us for her— Mooney walks past him goes don't you give that referee anything! Anyway, the next day we played another game and it had been fine, and we were sitting outside a hotel having a couple of drinks late in an evening, and Graham walks out and he's just about to go for a night out. And he sees us and he comes over, goes, you know, I'll sit with you lot. And so we sat there for an hour, a good hour and a half, getting to 2 hours.

Then the referee from the game before comes out of the hotel. Taylor just jumps up, grabs his hand, shakes it royally, goes, pissy offy, pissy offy. And it was just pure legend because the guy was just like thinking, oh, I'm being greeted by the ex-England manager, not a clue that he's totally taken into pieces. It was wonderful, it was just wonderful days.

So I think we've covered an awful lot there lots of amazing memories I think, and they've really been— it's been a pleasure listening, Peter, your experiences following Watford during the '90s and obviously what it's meant to you and continues to mean to you to this day because I think That's what, you know, me and Matt were trying to tap into a little bit when we thought of starting this podcast just because it is— it was a different decade. It was a decade where Watford didn't achieve a huge amount, but they did achieve some great things which, you know, we haven't actually really covered yet in the, in the podcast so far. I think there's more of the highs to come as the, as the decade progresses. But what I think the reason, you know, we both liked it so much as a period of time was because it felt like, yeah, a lot closer to the club, a lot closer to what was going on the pitch and more intimate in a way. And I think you've really, well, taken that to another level with some of the experiences that you've shared. And the reality is, which I think like Matt and Pete, I'm sure you'd agree, is that football has, you know, has changed. We all know that and it won't be the same for different generations of fans.

They'll have different experiences. I'm sure they'll have their own things that they, you know, remember fondly from. Growing up watching Watford now like we would have. But I think the things that you've brought out, Pete, in terms of the, you know, the camaraderie of the fans, that the fact that you all sort of knew each other, the experiences of going away with Watford at that time, and how, you know a few of you would actually be making those trips, and therefore the sort of like relationships that you'd have with the playing staff at the time. But then also just, yeah, the opportunity to be that bit closer to the club as a result and really like feel a part of it, which ultimately led you to create that independent supporters club as well and the movements that sort of followed in the late '90s. I think, you know, that's all come across and thank you very much for sharing that and for your support. Is there anything Anything you'd like to say, Pete?

I suppose to give you the final word before we wrap up.

Keep the faith, you ones.

Yeah, that's— I think we can all get behind that sentiment.

Absolutely.

All right, well, thanks for listening everyone. We'll be back with another episode soon. You can follow us at @OhMyWordPod on Twitter. Please continue to share your, you know, thoughts and reactions. We'd like to— it's all part of this. A big part of this is obviously just sharing everyone's experience and memories of the '90s because we've had a lot of fun with everyone doing that so far and hope that continues because that is— that's ultimately what we're here for is just pure nostalgia. So please do continue to share, and we'll be back with another episode soon.

Thanks everyone, goodbye.

Oh my word! No wonder the smiles are there.