The Playoff Run1998–99 · Part 1

Hello and welcome to Oh My Word, the podcast about Watford in the '90s. I'm Matthew, and as ever, I'm joined by Michael. How you doing, Michael?

Hello, Matt. I'm good. Very excited, very excited about this one.

And so you should be, because this week we are talking about the 1998-99 season. Watford are back in the second tier after winning the Division Two title in our previous episode. Very exciting times. Graham Taylor at the helm. Not an awful lot of changes in the squad though, Michael. What's it looking like as we go into the season?

Yeah, so there were, there were a few players coming in and a few players out. It wasn't wholesale changes. I think it's is the way to look at this one. But as we mentioned, I think we alluded to in the previous episode, a couple of players from Carlisle that caught the eye in the previous season, Alan Smart and Nick Wright. So they were both came in this summer around sort of £100K each. So not mega bucks, but Smart, a centre forward, and Wright an all-action sort of wide midfielder both joining from Carlisle after impressing against Watford at Vicarage Road. Also picked up Johann Gudmundsson from Keflavik for a fee that was, you know, rumoured to be sort of anything up to 200 grand.

These are quite— I think signing an Icelandic under-21 international was one of the more exotic signings Watford made at that time. And speaking of, you know, glamorous signings from abroad, this summer also saw the arrival of Michel Ngonge from Samsunspor in Turkey. So he was signed on a free, and I think the interesting thing about this one, which a lot of people probably remember from hearing about at the time, was he was signed on the evidence of a videotape, essentially. And I think the club, you know, Taylor was open about this as well, that it wasn't his usual way of doing things. But obviously, this was in the era where agents started to, you know, put together highlight reels of their players and send them around to clubs. And obviously, an agent, it must have been an agent that Taylor trusted for him to act on this.

So, you know, before the days of YouTube, 'Ngonge best skills and goals,' or, you know, 'Welcome to Watford, Michel Ngonge,' like, you know, those videos that people put together on YouTube now. They would have been sticking the VHS tape in at Watford HQ and having a look to see what Michel Ngonge was up to and were convinced that it was worth a punt. Tony Daley had a trial to try and get a contract, so he'd been joined the first team squad and was training with the squad to try and get a contract, and he did eventually earn a short-term contract with the club. Obviously a player that Graham Taylor knew very well from his time at Aston Villa and Wolves, and England as well, and England of course. Yes, you know, I think Tony Daley had been a player of real pedigree in the late '80s and early '90s, you know, very quick, proper old-school winger, get past players and get into the box, but he'd had a lot of injury trouble I mean, well, yeah, as was— as we've seen when players coming into Watford. During the last few years, there were— there was a lot of these sort of players who'd— who still had something, but they'd had a lot of injuries, or, you know, their careers were sputtering a bit.

And that gave clubs like Watford an opportunity to take a chance to see if they could get something out of them. In a similar vein, Dean Yates joined from Derby on a free, and I think Yates was a, you know, had a reputation of being a really good defender, quite a class act when he was fully fit and in his prime, you know, a very calming presence at the back who could really read the game well. But again, you know, I think by this stage he sort of had knees made of balsa wood, and you never knew how long his appearances, run of appearances, was going to last. So these are players brought in for, you know, no fees, but it was, it was a risk, still a risk in terms of how many, how many minutes you'd see from the contract you're offering them. So but a bit of extra experience at the back. One player there was a bit of a transfer saga.

I don't know if you remember this one, that Sergei Kleshchenko. I can remember reading about this exclusively in the Watford Observer. I don't think anyone else has fronted this, but I do remember the club pursuing this forward for quite some time.

Yeah, it seemed like every week, every week there was an update in the Observer. Yeah, I do, I do remember this. He joins the list of players like Jerren Nixon and Sigurd Rushfeldt, of these exotic strikers that Watford were pursuing in the '90s, and none of them ever quite, quite got them over the line. I think the Kleshchenko deal, he was Moldovan, I believe, and yeah, I think that there were work permit issues which may have been able to be resolved, I'm not sure. But then I think also the selling club at the last minute decided they'd actually like quite a little bit more money, please. Yeah, so yeah, that one fell through unfortunately.

And then in terms of outgoings, not too many. Dominic Ludden and Steve Talboys both released. Dai Thomas, after his brief moment of glory scoring in the Derby win at Kenilworth Road last season, so he's returns to Wales in a £50,000 transfer back to Cardiff. And Nathan Lowndes, again, very brief appearances for Watford, headed north of the border to St. Johnstone.

I think there's a feeling there that Taylor is, you know, this is well reported anyway, this isn't a novel thought, but Taylor's essentially rewarding the team that got promoted, isn't he? He's augmenting it with these new signings, but they're not like out-and-out replacements for players.

No, I think he's trying to, yeah, like you say, bolster the squad, make sure we've got reinforcements because they're going into a tougher league. Yeah, but he wants to give the team that came up, the bulk of that team, he wants to give them a chance to do it again. And I think Well, I think that's probably a recognition of the fact that there was, as we talked about last season, the main strength of this team was its team ethic, the fact that they bonded together, they were working together. I think Taylor, as a manager, was always very nervous about disrupting that too much, wasn't he? He was nervous about the consequences of suddenly bringing in 5, 6 new faces straight into the first team and expecting that chemistry to continue. It doesn't work like that in football. You obviously need the balance, don't you?

You need to get a balance of— you need quality, but if you bring in too much change at once, it can be very difficult from a from a coach, when your whole ethos, I suppose, as Graham Taylor's was, is about, you know, the team, it's all about the team ethic and about the, you know, the mentality and the bond that the players have, etc., then that comes first. I was neither sort of pleased nor disappointed, I suppose, in that transfer window. I just thought, well, he's doing, you know, interesting, you know. I wasn't— I never expected Watford to go out and spend big bucks, so didn't know what to expect from really any of the signings that had come in, including Alan Smart and Nick Wright, because I didn't remember them for Carlisle. So it was it was, it was interesting that those are the ones that they've gone for.

I just thought, well, let's see what they can do.

You can kind of take that 6 in pairs as well, can't you? The— just looking at the list now, it's like, you know, Smart and Wright, good players in a, in a struggling team. Can they make the step up? Gudmundsson and Ngonge, no one knows who either of them are. Could be brilliant, could be terrible. And Daley and Yates are as you said, players with a good pedigree but pretty unreliable in terms of their injury records. So yeah, kind of 3 types of player that he's brought in, and interesting to see what happens with them in terms of—.

So I suppose more generally what's going on in football terms. Wolves, Ipswich, Bolton, and Sunderland among the favourites to go up. Sunderland, as we know, have a certain Kevin Phillips playing up front with Niall Quinn. It formed a formidable partnership. They've missed out on promotion the previous season, but they were hotly tipped to challenge again. And Bolton had some really good players in their side as well, players like Eidur Gudjohnsen leading the line for them.

And, you know, Ipswich and Wolves both had quality players in their lineups as well. So I think it was going to be tough, it was going to be a tough division given the quality of players in there. But Taylor was, you know, talking talking tough. He wasn't there to make up the numbers. He's saying he thinks we're a top 10 team, and you know, if you're a top 10 team, then you've got a chance to be in the top 6 team. So as you said, he's put his faith in us, in the, in the, in the players. Got in there and wanted to give them a chance.

Kit-wise, we have a new home kit, a new away kit as well, didn't we? We had Le Coq Sportif, a very, you know, heritage brand. I think when I think Le Coq Sportif, I usually think of— did they make a Spurs kit for a while in the '80s? I feel like they did, but I might have imagined that. It was a yellow shirt with red sleeves and it had sort of trim along the shoulders with the, with the Le Coq motif on, and red shorts again, quite a baggy cut. I've got this shirt actually, and it's, it's one that I can actually still wear, which I guess suggests it was quite a forgiving shape because I can still wear it. I played football in it the other night.

And the away kit was— I wasn't a fan of this away kit. It was a sort of, yeah, blue and silver stripes. I didn't really know what was going on there. And the badge was in those colours as well. And I'm never— this sort of monochromed blue and silver badge, it didn't look right to me.

This is where we end the podcast because that is my favourite Watford kit of the decade by some distance, I think. Yeah, we have revealed some of my more controversial kit opinions as we've been through.

No, but you've actually talked me around on the old book blue one because I really— when I saw that on Classic Football Shirts the other day, I thought, that is— yeah, it actually looks nice and it's got a nice collar and I can see a where you're coming from on that one, but this one—.

Well, we'll give it a few more years and you'll be on to this one as well.

We'll see. I think we might need a poll on this one as well. We'll see where we are. And then I suppose just like, where are we like culturally as well? I mean, I feel like this era, '98 onwards, we're into the sort of the death throes of the Britpop indie era. That's just not really cool anymore.

I think those. The bands, you know, the big household names like Oasis and Blur were so big now that they couldn't really be considered sort of alternative and cool. They were playing stadiums and being very indulgent. And I don't think the smaller sort of indie Britpop scene had sort of died a death and had been replaced by really like by dance music, I think. And it was the era of the super clubs like, you know, Ministry of Sound and Cream, Gatecrasher. They were sort of like dance music. Dance music became quite mainstream at this time and was, you know, very much a feature of Radio 1 and mainstream, you know, contemporary radio stations.

So it's quite a big shift there. What was going on in your world at this time, Matt?

Yeah, like you say, the kind of the pop element of Britpop had gone and had been replaced with a slightly harder edge, I think. And I was kind of not massively keen on that. And I also was definitely not keen on the scourge of nu metal, which was in its infancy at the time.

But you weren't a big— you weren't a big Limp Bizkit fan?

No, I wasn't. No, I like rock music and I like rap music, but, you know, not the two together. I don't like pineapple on my pizza and I don't like nu rock.

So fair enough. Fair enough. But what about as the season kicked off? Matt, we started the season on another very sunny August day. This time we were away down on the South Coast. What can you tell us about how the season started?

Yeah, happy day at Fratton Park, I think. We win 2-1, let's look up to the chase, and I wasn't there and you were, so you can tell us all about how hot it was in the away end.

Well, yeah, that was an absolute, that was a scorcher. There's no away roof over the away end at Fratton Park. We've gone down in my mate's Mark 1 Fiesta, which is basically, it was just a tin can, in the heat, and it got in a traffic jam in the heat. Obviously, we're like 4 idiot lads who hadn't brought any water with us, and we were absolutely roasting. And then we got to Fratton Park, and then it was just sitting in the sun, and obviously we didn't have sun cream or anything like that. So and I remember the refreshment kiosks were being were very limited in their provisions on the day for the away end as well. But there was a lot of— there was a lot of lobsters by the end of it, I think it's fair to say.

But. The game itself was remarkable in terms of Watford coming away with a victory because it was one of those classic ones where you're basically outplayed for 70-75 minutes by Portsmouth, who looked so much more assured, moving the ball much more quickly with a lot more zip. And they had John Aloisi up front who was, you know, looked like a real classy finisher. He scored that goal, didn't he? A good goal. He scored their goal, really good goal. Yeah, and it was a bit like for the first sort of 70 minutes, the away end was pretty quiet because we've made a lot of noise at the start, but by just 17 minutes of getting, getting your asses smacked and it's being sort of roasted in the sun, it was hard to continue to muster too much enthusiasm.

We just thought, we're not getting anything from this. And then Portsmouth contrived to gift Watford a goal. It's an absolute gift a ball forward from Micah Hyde that the Portsmouth defender tried to sort of cushion a header back to his goalkeeper. He didn't realise his goalkeeper had stepped forward off his line and just looped a header straight back over his goalkeeper into that. I mean, it came from absolutely nowhere, and all of a sudden it was 1-1. And that was in about the 80th minute, I think. And as this so often happens in these games you get one, the momentum changes, and Portsmouth was suddenly— couldn't believe what they'd done, basically.

They were so deflated by that they stopped playing. And Darren Bazeley. Who I think had come on as a sub, suddenly found that he could beat his man at will down the right-hand side, looked completely energized, and 4 minutes later swung over a cross for Jason Lee to head home. But I think Jason Lee scoring the winner in this way, I mean, the thing that I remember about this is when you reflect on this season back is that we started this game with Jason Lee and Ronnie Rosenthal up front.

Yeah, I was just going to say the same thing actually. Yeah, it seems difficult to imagine, like, obviously for different reasons, neither of them really played very much more at all. But yeah, our attack had completely changed. Smart had started the match, but none of the other, none of the other new signings had started, had they?

No. And Smart was pretty quiet in that game. He didn't really get a look in. He tried, but there wasn't— I mean, none of them got a look in. It was— we really just played for the last sort of 15 minutes of the game and ended up winning it. So when you're there for those games, they're magnificent, aren't they? Yeah, because you come out feeling so chuffed because you know you've absolutely got away with one there and you're not entirely Sure hell, it didn't really— I don't think anyone read too much into that.

I thought, well, we were pretty lucky to get a win. But, you know, reflecting on what had gone previously, it was great to see the team still fighting, still hanging in there and still able to dig out a result against, you know, better opposition than they would have been facing last year. But they still managed to get something out of it by just sticking together.

So yeah, well, kind of reversing that, we have a couple of games against Cambridge, and they're in the third tier. We've played them in a preseason friendly, and they're I think they'd spanked us really. I think they'd done really well against us in preseason. We obviously hadn't learned anything about that match because in the first leg away we lose 1-0. Trevor Benjamin, who was kind of unknown at the time and did obviously go on to have some repute, he scores. Tony Daley does come off the bench. Jason Lee plays again, and that would be his final match for Watford, and we draw the second leg 1-1.

Sandwiched between those games, we beat Bradford 1-0 at home. Michel Ngonge scores, that's his home debut. Something I think has made us both laugh is his celebration. He hightails it back to the halfway line and Graham Taylor reaches out for a handshake and he gets a big, like, low five instead, doesn't he? You can see Taylor, like, shaking his hand afterwards as the camera pans away and, like, it's obviously stuck in his mind because he talks about it later in the season, doesn't he?

Yeah, says his hand's still red, still stinging after. Ngonge slapped it. I just remember there being a lot of talk about Ngonge before the game. Like, it was one of those— because like we talked about, there wasn't much known about him. So there was a lot of people just saying how fast they'd heard he was. Yeah, I can hear— he heard he can run 100 metres in 10 seconds. Yeah, stuff like this, sort of like myths about him.

Or he can jump as high as a bus. Yeah, it's kind of like— and then he did, he did. There was a moment where there's someone just, you know, punted the ball forwards and he turned and sprinted off the ball. And he was. He could shift, couldn't he? Yeah, once he got going. But it was also apparent very quickly that he was, he was entirely unpredictable in terms of where the ball was going to go.

Yes, he was, wasn't he?

In both those games that he scores, so yeah, the league game against Bradford and the cup game against Cambridge, they're both kind of like not quite diving headers, but near enough stooping headers. And he was he was quite good with his head. Like, he was, yeah, he was, he was slightly less unpredictable with his head, let me put it that way. A bit more of a backhanded compliment there. But yeah, he was very fast and he could go through in a one-on-one and pretty much hit the corner flag. He, it was, he was very unpredictable. But yeah, his first two appear— I liked him as well.

Yeah, his first two appearances he scores in. So, you know, if he's your, you know, you know, essentially a marquee striker Yeah, good on him. So we're out of the cup but we make it 3 wins from 3 in the league by going to Bristol City, who had been promoted alongside us obviously last year. Good. Good title tussle they gave us, and we actually spanked them 4-1. Richard Johnson comes back for this game, he'd been injured in a pre-season match, and so this is his first game back. The team is kind of transformed from a couple of scrappy league wins and some rubbish cup performances, this is a dominate, a dominant performance against a team that probably think they're quite good as well.

I think we've mentioned it before during this series, but his first goal is just absolutely stupid. It kind of falls out of the air and he hits a ball as hard as I've ever seen it anyone hit a ball before. And the keeper can— all he can do is palm it straight up onto the bar, and it comes back down on his head and goes in. But, you know, the keeper pretty much ends up in the back of the net as well. He's incredibly incredibly powerful strike.

Yeah, I mean, how many seasons is this? It's sort of fourth season doing it, really, as a sort of first-team regular now. Yeah, but. He'd been— he'd done it every season, he delivered, yeah, in terms of just and he had such confidence running onto the ball. And that one, I think there was a lot of pent-up frustration that he let out on that.

Yeah, oh, absolutely. Yeah. Well, he gets another one as well, another one that's kind of like pinged in low on the ground into the far corner. In between that, Dean Yates, who started the season alongside Keith Millen at centre-back, he scores a lovely bit of Mike Vince's commentary. You've got to have every season, got to have one of them. After Dean Yates puts the ball in the back of the net, Mike says, "There's competitor number 2 in the smile of the afternoon contest," which is lovely. And a nice move down our right ends up with Alon Hazan sweeping home to get our 4th.

So yeah, handsome win, 4-1. Several people have mentioned the Bristol City Champions banner, which we didn't mention in the previous episode. But yeah, when we went to Bristol City last year, someone had spotted a slightly presumptuous Champions banner that had been prepared for if Bristol City had been champions, obviously. So yeah, Matt Rowson and others point out the chant of 'where's your banner gone?' at this match. But yeah, we won our first 3 league matches of the season, so if you've just been promoted, then however you manage to do that, it's great. Still, the next match is at title favourites, or as you said, one of the title favourites, Sunderland, and we come back down to earth with a bit of a bump there because it's our first trip up to the Stadium of Light. They've started really well, like I say, they've been winning and they would go on to keep winning as well.

Kevin Phillips had already got 4 goals in the 5 games that he played so far this season. He doesn't score against us, but they still managed to score 4 against us. Alan Smart scores ours, so we lose 4-1 up at Stadium of Light. And then another, another big team come to Watford on a Friday night, live TV, Wolves. Oh interesting game for lots of reasons. We did not play well in this match, did we?

No, it was awful. I mean, this will be a bit of a theme, sadly, for what has been a theme, hasn't it? The live on Sky but the Friday night games in particular just seemed to bring out the worst in Watford during the '90s, and this one was no exception. I mean, to be fair, Wolves were a decent side. They had some quality players in their lineup. They had Robbie Keane, didn't they?

Yeah, so up front, up front they had Bull and Keane, and they both scored against us. So Bull was kind of 34-ish, I would imagine. Yeah, Keane, still a teenager, but Bull had, you know, had been a capable striker at this level.

It's a great— his goal is a really good finish.

It is a good finish. Yeah, he'd been doing it for, you know, a decade plus, hadn't he? So yeah, you know, we always knew we were gonna have trouble when we played against him. Yeah, Colin Lee's in charge of Wolves and it's his first job, first management job he'd had since he left us way back in our first episode in 1990.

Welcome back, Colin.

Yeah, exactly, yeah, we knew he'd be back and it just took him a little while. So yeah, we lose 2-0, but some of our listeners will obviously remember that this is a sensational moment, Harry the Hornet marrying Harriet the Hornet. The marriage was conducted by the official club chaplain and Wolfie, the Wolves mascot, was best man/witness, I suppose. So yeah, we do know how to bring out the cringe on national TV as well, don't we?

Dear God, yeah. I think we already covered this, didn't we, in a previous episode, but yeah, it was the fact that it was all sort of taking place in front of the Vicarage Road end and people didn't really know what to make of it. It was a sort of like this, it's a joke that's gone a bit too far, I think, actually having a ceremony. But there we are. It was, you know, a bit of creativity from the marketing guys that got a bit carried away, I think.

Absolutely, absolutely. And indeed, one of our listeners was in the suit. It was, It was sent to me by direct message. I don't think that counts as. I don't think I should out him. Okay, but yeah, so that brings us to the end of August, and we're in 5th, which is obviously a brilliant, brilliant return for our first first season back in the relative big time. Jason Lee has departed the club by this time.

He's moved to Chesterfield for £200 grand. That transfer had rumbled on for a few weeks but was finally over the line. He'd sort of fallen down the pecking order, or was set to, with the arrival of Smart and Ngonge, and also had never moved closer to the club from his Nottingham house. And Graham Taylor was a bit of a stickler for people living in the region, wasn't he? So for a couple of reasons, he left the club that he'd been at for just over a year and had an up and down time, but was obviously responsible for a couple of great memories while he was here.

Yeah, I think overall you have to look at Jason Lee's— let's just say he basically had a season at the club in terms of his contributions. And although he had that sort of horrific barren spell, he did still do a fair part of the job that he was asked to do as a physical presence up front as a target man, which we hadn't had. And he scored some really crucial goals at this— he sort of bookended that promotion-winning team, didn't he, from the second division, which got promoted. He scored some important goals at the start to get us going and some very important goals at the end. He scored the goal that won us the title. So yeah, so overall I think, you know, he's— we should look back on him and think there was a decent signing. He was never going to be the greatest centre forward Watford ever signed.

I don't think anyone expected that. So yeah, so, you know, Thank you, Jason. Thank you, Jason. Good luck to you. So yeah, so they know, but obviously not the best run of form going into September, having had that great start. We've come off a couple of defeats against the better, sort of the more fancied sides in the division, as you said, Matt. And then a disappointing one away at Huddersfield we lost 2-0, and that was 3 defeats in a row.

And I think that sort of the goals have dried up a bit, and they're just. Struggling a little bit. Taylor was experimenting with 5-3-2 and 4-4-2 and wide players not having tremendous impact. They played QPR in the next home game in mid-September, and this one they won. And they won it having to sort of— they've got an early goal to get them off the mark, and then QPR got a late-ish equalizer, and Watford managed to come back again and win the game with an Alan Smart winner. But I think I think it was Nick Wright who it was one of his sort of first occasions, I think, where he really imposed himself on a game. Ian Grant noted in Blind, Stupid and Desperate that there was a potential Vic Road hero there, and I think.

It was that sort of all-action, all-energy style from Nick Wright with a bit of, you know, trickery and skill as well. But started to, you know, a player who could make a difference in a tight game, and that's what I've been missing in that run of defeat. So getting back to winning ways, I think, very important there. And the Carlisle boys are starting to have an impact. They certainly do in the next game away at Swindon. So this is definitely one of the results of the season. Watford run out 4-1 winners away at Swindon with Alan Smart netting twice, one of them to a really smartly taken sort of lob.

Nicky Wright scores and Alon Hazan scores again. I think it's, you know, slightly flattering in that Swindon were all over Watford at the start, and it's one of those ones where we scored one and then scored two and three quite quite quickly afterwards. And, you know, sometimes those scorelines can be flattering. I don't think we were a sort of 4-1 better side, but I think it showed, you know, again, a ruthlessness that the team could possess when they all fired together. I think, you know, Graham Cagle notes— talked about this on Twitter— that sometimes these early results. That didn't necessarily reflect their performances because we had picked up, you know, a decent amount of points early on and we hadn't necessarily been, you know, outstanding in all of the games that we played so far. That's not a bad trait to have though, is it, at the start of the season when you've just been promoted?

And again, we made it 3 wins on the bounce again with another victory, this time a home win against Ipswich Town. And now this was, I suppose, the first— this is probably the first victory over one of the more fancied sides in the league. Ipswich, as we mentioned up front, they were, they were one of the fancy sides. They were you know, they really— my memories of Ipswich of this era were that they really knocked the ball around well. They were one of the sides that you come up against and thought they looked pretty classy. I don't know your reflections on this, on that. For me, this one was very much like the Portsmouth game earlier, and it not entirely didn't follow the same entirely same plot in that this— in this game we scored early, we then held on for 70 minutes pretty much.

Yes. Because Ipswich absolutely battered us for the rest of the game. They really hammered us. And I remember, I think, Holland, Matt Holland slams one off the post from about 25 yards. And I can remember just watching that ball. It seemed to— you could almost hear it whistle through the air and the slap of it coming off the post. But we were— were you at that game, Matt?

We were absolutely battered in that one.

Yeah, I remember it starting with Ngonge missing a glorious one-on-one, like, right at the beginning of the match. And then, yeah, we— we— our penalty was awarded very soon afterwards, wasn't it? Yeah. It matches my memory exactly. Yeah, we— yeah, we did really well for a very short period of time, and then it was back to the wall for, you know, 70 minutes.

Yeah, but another great win. And we end September with a home draw 1-1 against Sheffield United with Gifton Noel-Williams scoring. The only blemish to this was Ngonge went off injured. Well, he actually gone off injured in the previous game and was still missing. So, but a chance for Gifton to get a few more minutes and make a bit more of an impact in the, in the first team because this was a season I think where Gifton was expected to kick on again. He's played a lot of football already from breaking into the team as a 16-year-old, and although we were at a higher level now hoped that he could still progress and. You know, take his game up a level as well, which was going to be one of the personal challenges for him over the season, which we will see how his season develops as we go on into October.

Yeah, so going into October, we're 5th and it's really, really tight at the top, just a couple of points separating sort of 6 or 7 teams, I think. We didn't start the month terribly well. We go up to West Brom and lose, another bad performance in front of the cameras. And I think I was watching on TV, but you were at the Hawthorns, weren't you?

Yeah, it was awful. I don't really want to dwell on that one for too long, Matt, to be honest. It was Lee Hughes. For West Brom. He was their hitman at the time, scoring for fun. There's a lot of boing boing from the Baggies fans and, oh, horrible. It's awful.

I could not wait to get out of there and get back to New Street and get home.

Yeah, well, moving on. Yeah, moving swiftly on. Yeah, well, we played Birmingham at home next. It was a funny scheduling. There was only a handful of matches played in our division that weekend and us and several others played at midday so that people could get home after the match and watch the England match that afternoon. We draw it 1-1, Micah Hyde header kind of deflects in off Gary Rowett, and that's yeah, and that's 1-1. So we draw that one, and then we go up to Tranmere and we lose 3-2.

It's our fourth game without a win. Smart scores, and he's playing well as he's come into the team, and with Ngonge missing and Jason Lee sold, we don't have an awful lot of aerial ability in attack. You know, Noel-Williams is tall but not renowned for his strength in the air. You know, he can pull a ball out of the air with a magnetic chest. And Smart is— it's becoming very apparent that Smart is a great target man when the ball's played to his feet. We don't have an awful lot of aerial prowess, and some of the wide players are still swinging crosses in as if there's a Jason Lee there to get on the end of it, but there isn't.

It's Smart and Noel-Williams scored the goals in that match, in that loss, and we shortly, a couple of days later, we played Bolton away as well, and Taylor has kept the squad up in the Northwest. We have a terrible record up there. By this stage, it's 5 years, 5 seasons since we've won a game in the Northwest. So he's kept them up there for a bit of morale boosting and team bonding in those few days. And it works because Noel-Williams scores again and Kennedy scores and we win 2-1. Yeah, we'd gone 1-0 down, but I think it was quite a fun match. And listener Martin Elson says that was the game that he realized, if perhaps not the team realized, that we could be competitive in this league, that it wasn't a flash-in-the-pan start.

You know, we've ground out a good result, a good away result at a decent team. You know, Bolton, as we'll come on to find out, they're a good team this year, aren't they?

Yeah, they were a classy outfit. I think they had some really good players.

They had the Icelanders, didn't they?

They had the Icelanders, but they just— yeah, they were a very useful side and you did— I was— you didn't go there expecting to win. Yeah, so, you know, a point would have been a great result. A win was a fantastic result. And I think Martin is right that really put down. Marker. That one didn't feel like a fluke. I think, you know, that result against Ipswich, you know, we were a bit battered.

I think in the Bolton game, they really fought them and deserved to get that one over the line. I think it was tough, but they, you know, they did it.

They did, they did. Speaking of Icelanders, Port Vale at home, we draw 2-2, but an unlikely hero in that draw is Johann Gudmundsson, who scores 2 goals. Hadn't really featured in the side at this point. I didn't really know what sort of player he was, you know, he kind of filled in at fullback and wing-back. I think, I think he's a midfielder. I think, I think he probably spent most of his career in midfield. It seemed sort of fairly technically able, looked about 13 years old.

And yeah, I remember that match very clearly. I remember the surprise that he displayed when he scored, and I think you liked his celebration as well, didn't you?

Well, he's sort of like clapping. Almost like applauding himself. He sort of holds his hands up and is clapping as he's sort of running around, as if he's— it's like, I think he's just joining in the celebration because he's so elated, but it looks like he's sort of clapping himself as he's sort of running around because he doesn't really know what to do. Which is always like— it's, it's very delightful when you see a player who's obviously so thrilled to have scored. And he takes his first goal very well. He does, he does. Yeah, tidy finish.

Yeah, that Friend of the podcast, IJ, on Twitter specifically asked us to mention this. He says it's not the highlight of the season, but definitely worth mentioning, and that he deserves at least Lars Melvang status. And I think he's earned that, hasn't he?

We're gonna create the Melvang Index to rate some of these players who've just sort of come and gone very briefly.

There'll be a— it's going to be a long list.

Yeah, he's definitely in the sort of, you know, positive, over 100 on the Melvang Index, I think it's fair to say.

Yeah. Well, after a difficult few years in the Northwest, we now can't stop winning. So we go up to Bury and win 3-1. Bazeley and Ngonge and Smart score after we'd gone 1-0 down. Bazeley's goal is really good. He runs from the halfway line, he plays a kind of one-two with Smart cuts inside you know, a decent finish as well. Ngonge's back from injury and he scores.

Yeah, Alan Smart gets one as well, and in the interview after the match, he sort of notes how good the team are on the counter. You know, we aren't dominating games in terms of possession, we're not just sitting back and doing nothing either, but we would show throughout the season that we could be pretty lethal on the counter when we wanted to be, when we could put an incisive move together. That takes us to the end of October and we're still in 5th. You know, we're We're winning some, we're drawing some, and we're losing a couple, and we're sticking around in the playoff places. And we're getting into, you know, getting towards the winter. That's really good stuff.

I think that Bazeley goal really highlights where he's at now in his Watford career, where he's actually making those sorts of contributions. Not like he doesn't do it every week, but it feels like he's— he's sort of— he spent so many years where he just sort of viewed him as a sort of, you know, the— a bit of a— either like the sort of rookie winger who'd come on and, you know, maybe do something but also just drift out of a game. He just seems to know much more what his strengths are and how he's got that game intelligence now, hasn't he, basically? And actually, that starts to look like a really, a really useful player at this level because he can, he can run with the ball and he's got a decent cross and he can shoot as well. And yeah, like I said, he doesn't do it every single game, but his— this is a season, I think, where he starts to make those really important contributions at the right time, I think.

Yeah, and he's kind of— I think he's improving his versatility as well, isn't he? He's clearly learning a lot from Nigel Gibbs. Yeah, Darren Bazeley, I'm sure, would be the first to say that he was never the world's best defender. No, he was the world's best right back as such, but he could put a shift. And, you know, we were kind of moving into a period where full-backs were more becoming more attacking weapons as well. So, you know, having someone there who could— who had some recovery pace, could get out wide and sling— he was ever so good at slinging in those deep crosses.

I think that's probably Yeah, I think that's, that's, that's, that is what appeals probably with Taylor as well, is that Taylor likes players to get forward. He likes to use the wings and put crosses in, doesn't he? And Bazeley could do that. So you probably forgive him some of if his defensive side of his game wasn't quite as effective, then you'd let him off a bit of that if he was contributing going forwards, which he certainly was. So as you said, yes into November we go. Start off with a draw at home to Norwich City thanks to a Matt Jackson own goal.

We then follow that up with one another one of the memorable games of the season, at home to Oxford United. A few things to pull out about this game, but I think the thing that everyone remembers is that both teams were wearing Watford's kit. Oxford had turned up in their home kit, which is obviously yellow, fundamental clash there, so we had to lend them our away kit to play in, which was very strange. And there wasn't, I don't recall there being much of an announcement about that, it was just sort of, so you're sort of in the stadium. And you're like, playing in Watford's away kit, that's a really strange sight to see. I don't think it did the morale of the Oxford team much good to be having to borrow kit off their opposition, because they were awful in this game, Oxford, and Watford absolutely battered them from start to finish. Steve Palmer scores the first, and then it just took an absolute eternity for Watford to kill the game off, because they were— they probably should have scored 5 or 6 in this game.

And I know sometimes you say that and it's exaggerating, but they really should have. They were, they were that dominant. Nick Wright, I mean, this Nick Wright had games like this, didn't he, where he— it was, you were left scratching your heads in terms of how he hadn't scored because he just seemed to be absolutely everywhere and on the end of everything. And there's, there's— he gets put through on goal and then scuffs his finish wide. He then gets put through again and beats the keeper, and the defender clears it off the line when he's about to tap it in. And it's just, you know one of those days for him. Eventually Gifton scores the winner to settle it with a very tidy finish.

It's a really good goal, actually. Yeah, I really like that one. Yeah. And it was— you started to see him do more of this as the season went on, Gifton, where he. He started to score these goals where he'd actually get running behind and finish with like a really like composed first-time finish. This is sort of outside of the boot one, isn't it? He flicks it first time.

Past the goalkeeper with the outside of his boot, but because he's so powerful, it absolutely flies past the goalkeeper. It's a sort of toe boot, but it absolutely rockets past him. And we also see Robert Page as sort of like, you know, the ball-playing centre-half in this game as well. He sets up Nick Wright for a chance, one of the many ones that Nick Wright squanders, but he steps forward out of defence.

Yeah, kind of marches through the midfield, doesn't he? A bit of a defence-splitting pass.

Yeah, it wouldn't look out of place in the modern era, I think, that one from Pagey. So the other thing I wanted to know about this was this was in Watford's, you know, the way that they reviewed this season. This was one of the first seasons where they decided to release not one but two videos. So they did the sort of first video actually ended after this Oxford game on the 7th of November. Presumably that was to give them time to sort of edit, put it together. Produce it and get it in the shop for Christmas because it was a bit of a random time to stop the video on the 7th of November. So that was, that was the first part that came out, which I think was called like Our Story So Far or something like that.

Obviously at that point no one knew where this season was going. It had been, you know, a very positive start to the season, but we didn't know have a clue where it was going to end up. That was. That was available in the Hornets shop for stocking fillers that December. As the month went on, we drew away at Stockport and then followed that up with a really good thumping victory over Crewe, 4-2. It's the first time Vicarage Road has seen, you know, a decent amount of goals from the home team. Gifton scores twice, but Bazeley on the scoresheet again.

And Nicky Wright— Mike Vince's really struggling on the comms in this one, his rasping voice. He's getting maybe he's just been getting overexcited. But 3 times in the first half we score in this game. So the first time we've really sort of actually come out flying out the traps and put a game to bed early on, although we still managed to concede twice, but the game is never really in doubt. And then we go away to Selhurst Park. I think lots of Watford fans are still pretty bitter about this one. We draw 2-2 at Palace.

Terry Venables was in the Palace dugout, and they still had— I think they had Attilio Lombardo was still in their side as well, one of their signings from their doomed Premier League season. But Watford were 2-0 up and playing really, really well. Palace pulled one back before halftime, and in the second half, Saša Ćurčić with an absolute shocker of a dive. And it is, you know, how has he sold that to the referee? It's an absolute stinker. And oh, it's terrible, isn't it?

Like, even Craig Ramage would shake his head at that, which would be disgusting piece of work.

Yeah, I mean, you can see it even in— even on the sort of, you know, grainy VHS footage and you've recycled onto YouTube, you can still see it's an absolute shocker of a dive. Nowhere near any contact and just throws himself to the floor. The referee buys it and we draw 2-2. But yeah, watching it back, it still, still hurts, but it still hurts. But never mind, we'll move on, we'll move on into December. But we end the month, we end November 3rd which is remarkable to be 3rd going into December for a newly promoted side. You could probably tell that the pattern of results has started to get a lot more patchy we're not.

Going, you know, on the sort of 3-4 match-winning streaks at the moment. But we're still in a position in the table where we'd have absolutely snapped your hand off if you'd offered that to us at the start of the season. It would be third going into the start of December. And we just signed Alex Bonnot, the young— is he French or Belgian? Alex, he was French. He's French. Yeah, but I think— did we sign him from a Belgian club?

I don't know.

We may well have done. I'm not sure. I don't even— was it— I don't know. I'm not even sure he was that young. But a classy midfielder, I think, could put his foot on the ball and kind of give us a bit of breathing space when we needed it, but we wouldn't get to see him for a little while because we signed him as a crocked man.

Are you getting confused with Bakalli? Do you remember Bakalli, Adrian Bakalli?

Oh wow, yeah, that's next season.

He was Belgian, he was Belgian and young, I think. So yes, I've gotten confused, apologies. So Matt, tell us what happens going into December.

Well, this period we've been without Graham Taylor, who's had a— he'd been in hospital with what I'm sure it was reported at the time as being quite a serious condition, but I was reminded of how serious it was. He had an abscess and it completely blocked up his windpipe and could have been extremely, extremely dangerous. So he was hospitalised for a brief period, and while he was recuperating, Kenny Jackett has kind of stepped into the dugout, well, dugout that he would have already been sat in anyway, but he would have moved a seat across at least, at least. But going into December, it's Barnsley at home, which is a really boring, boring nil-nil, notable only for the fact that I'm astonished that their keeper didn't get sent off. He comes charging out of the area and just goes right through Gifton Noel-Williams. Yeah, he's just given a booking, but yeah, you're pretty— one of a number of fairly dubious refereeing decisions that we see over the course of the season. But then a real strange match at home to Stockport, it's the 12th of December, Taylor is fit enough to sit in the director's box alongside Elton John, and indeed after the match, or around the time of the match anyway, they hold a press conference together.

Elton isn't around an awful lot. He probably hasn't been back since the since the Wycombe game that we spoke about last season. You know, that's a reason for them to have a press conference, and they talk about short, medium, and long-term plans, but they all seem to be just. We need to get into the Premier League, essentially. Yeah. And this match is very strange because it finishes 4-2, but it was absolutely not a 4-2 game at all. Chamberlain is our man of the match because Stockport are really, really good and they have some really good chances, yet we reach the 90th minute with 4-0 up.

So we never really sort of fully dominated the game. Noel-Williams gets another brace, so he's, you know, still right amongst the goals. Johnson gets another one, and Wright again, but they score 2 goals in injury time to kind of take the gloss off what would have been, well, what could perhaps have been an even stranger result. Because it said if it wasn't a 4-2, then it definitely wasn't a 4-0 either. Yeah, Johnson's goal is a good volley that kind of bounces it in off a defender. All the goals are good in that match really. Noel-Williams follows that up in the next match, the last match before Christmas.

We lose away at Grimsby, Noel-Williams gets our goal. And then the two kind of festive games. Home to Bristol City, 1-0 win with an Alan Smart winner. We signed 'Bunion Ben.' Ben Iroha has had a trial period and he signs, and the club are aware that he's suffering from these bunions and they would cause him great trouble, but he gives us an extra option kind of on the left-hand side. And last game of 1998 is away at Norwich. Iwan Roberts scores for Norwich, but Steve Palmer scores a really fierce drive to equalize, equalise that 1-1. And we finished the month and indeed the year back in our familiar position of 5th.

So yes, Ben Iroha was another of those signings, wasn't he, that came out of absolutely nowhere. And there was quite a lot of excitement again because he was actually a, you know, proper Nigerian international, I think, at the time. Yeah, had been. Apparently the club knew about— they obviously knew about the bunions. It wasn't— that wasn't a surprise, I think, that, you know, he had some history with that. But they, you know, again, another one that they wanted to take a chance with because he was a player, you know, of a decent level. He played, you know, however many caps for Nigeria and was reasonably experienced and early impressions were that he was going to be a lot of fun, weren't they?

I mean, if Michel Ngonge was unpredictable, then I mean, Ben Abraha was like, I mean, something else, wasn't he, in terms of you just absolutely did not know. What was going to happen when he got near the ball.

Yeah, slightly more nerve-wracking when it's your, you know, left-back that's doing that rather than your striker as well.

Yeah, I think I read about him on Blind, Stupid and Desperate and they described him as like the anti-Gibbs basically in terms of left-back. He was sort of everything that Nigel Gibbs isn't, but they didn't mean that necessarily in an entirely negative sense. It was like he obviously brought things to the side that someone like Nigel Gibbs couldn't, but you've got none of the steady and calm influence and the reliability that you get from a Nigel Gibbs. None of that was It was sort of, it was strap in and hold on to your butts time when Ben Iroha was on the pitch. Which we saw, the new year kicks off with an away trip to Spurs in the FA Cup. So a fun third round tie. George Graham was Spurs manager at the time.

I went to this one, it was the best opening minute of a trip to Spurs, I think, what the fans have ever enjoyed. And it was Ben Iroha at the heart of it. He just— I don't know what he was doing up there. He just decided to charge up his flank in the opening sort of 30 seconds. Rocketed past Sol Campbell and slammed the ball across, and Johnson ends up slamming it home. I think 50 seconds gone, the away end, Watford fans in absolute bedlam. It was.

Everyone going absolutely crazy. And then Spurs really took over after that. It was— they had David Ginola in their team, and he was having a lot of fun against Watford's defence. And we didn't really know what to do about him. It was the first time I think this team had come up against a real classy player, you know, someone who really was really creative and really classy on the ball. And it showed that there was a bit of a gulf in class just from him. I don't think the rest of the team and this— it wasn't a vintage Spurs side.

They didn't offer too much else. But Allan Nielsen does score for Spurs in this game, a player who we would later see at Vicarage Road. And Peter Kennedy scores another one for Watford. But we end up losing 5-2, and it's all over as a contest by halftime, that one. So no long cup run for Watford this year. So yeah, so the rest of the beginning of 1999 as we hurtle towards the new millennium. It's worth mentioning actually that Millennium by Robbie Williams, quite a big song this season.

And generally I think millennium, the millennium was starting to feature quite a lot in popular culture, wasn't it? It was lots of rappers were talking about the Y2K as well and the Y2K computer glitch. Everyone was talking about that.

Yeah, the millennium bug, the millennium, millennium dome as well.

Yeah. So the dome was being built as all the, you know, the celebrations being planned and stuff. But that was That was— although we were only just into the start of this year, that was looming over everyone now. And the talk of, you know, the new millennium, that was a big thing. That was a big deal. And you have the computer bug. I mean, just— I know this is a bit of an aside, but just the fact that people were so— the rumours again that sort of.

You know, the banks were going to stop working and planes were going to fall out of the sky.

Yeah, it's just going to be absolute anarchy.

Yeah, it was like going to be the end of Fight Club, basically. It was going to be like that. But yes, but that all sounds very exciting. And for Watford, it was a couple of nil-nil draws at home to Portsmouth and away at Wolves. Not much to report from either of those games. I went to Molineux. That's the only time I've been to Molineux.

The most memorable thing about that was that I had breakfast, I had a fry-up in the Asda cafe near Molineux, and it was very reasonably priced and not bad actually, and I think that's all I want to say about it.

I was in the game and I have no memory of it whatsoever.

Yeah, it was two absolute shockers to start the year off, I think. Followed up with a defeat at home to West Brom. I think this might have been the game where there was sort of. Well, there's a local Nigerian sort of cultural organisation did a sort of a welcoming for Ben Iroha. Do you remember this? There was a sort of a—.

I do, I do remember it. I remember it being on the front of a program, but I don't remember when the event itself took place.

Well, I know that we lost the game immediately afterwards, and Ben Iroha played probably his worst game in a Watford shirt afterwards. So they had this big fanfare on the pitch and sort of welcome to Ben Iroha, and then he played an absolute shocking match and Watford lost. So that wasn't great, but Tony Daley finally makes his league debut. So that is the one positive from the West Brom defeat, and it actually does all right. So, you know, halfway through the season now and we've got Daley on the pitch. It's also a time when Taylor announces that Stuart Slater and Wayne Andrews will be available on free transfers at the end of the season. I think, you know, Slater we talked about, didn't we that he.

Could look absolutely superb, but more often than not, his performances, even if he was beating his man. Didn't really— there wasn't the end product was there from him, and he couldn't stay fit long enough as well, which the other problem is with Slater. And Andrews' Watford career had looked really promising at the start and just sort of petered out a bit. Taylor remarks that he shouldn't have requested to come back early from a loan spell at Cambridge. I think he always thought that he needed to get a bit more experience.

Yeah, I think he still sort of seems to be questioning his mental strength. I think that he'd had a couple of had a loan spell at Cambridge. He goes on another loan spell, I forget where, Peterborough maybe, and I think scores 4 on his debut. But they don't follow up that interest, his loan spell isn't successful. But yeah, I think Taylor's kind of saying there, look, you're going to go through bad times, you're going to have hard times, beginning of your career, end of your career, you've got to work through them rather than kind of coming back to the safe home of Watford and sitting in the stand. I mean, you've got to, got to be asking more for your career than he was at the time.

I think that's right. And then the month ends with one of the performances, if not, you know, the performance of the season. I don't think it's hard to say what the performance of the season was because there were several very good ones, but at home to Sunderland, 30th of Jan 1999, definitely up there with some of the best performances that we've seen from Watford during this period. And I think it's not just a performance, it was the occasion as well, because it was a really packed Vicarage Road this one. Sunderland had brought absolutely tonnes of fans with them because they knew they were on the march, you know, they knew they were going up this time. They had that momentum and they were scoring goals for fun, they had a real swagger about them, and you know, but then lots of people wanted to come and see them.

So lots of, you know, I think it drew people to the stadium as well because they were quite a big draw at this time. You know, Phillips and Quinn, everyone knew how effective they were. You know, they were winning 3-0, 4-0 most weeks, scoring goals for fun. It was going to be a tough ask for Watford to stand up to that, and it was going to need, you know, the very best of this team. I think the very best of what they could pull together. We knew that they were capable of doing extraordinary things. I think we'd seen that over the last year and a half.

We knew they didn't do it every week, but it was going to need to be one of those games where they were absolutely sort of more than the sum of their parts and really. Used that sort of team ethos that they could draw on and that energy to try and put Sunderland amongst some pressure. It was all that and more, I think, from Watford. And the Watford crowd were really up for this. I remember it being— the Vicarage Road end was really, really loud, and, you know, the Sunderland fans were obviously making tremendous noise as well. And it all just made for a proper atmosphere and a real sort of back and forth. And there was a real ebb and flow to this one.

It was proper blood and guts football. I think we probably caught Sunderland, you know, not quite at their best. You kind of need that when you're playing against one of the top sides, but I think we put them, we knocked them out of their stride a bit by really probably surprising them a bit with how aggressive we were from the off. Nick Wright was absolutely tremendous in this game. He scores the first goal with a great header, but it was one of those matches that Nick Wright had where I think he had to be subbed off before the end because he basically run himself out of the game. He was just sort of exhausted. That was pretty much every appearance.

It was pretty much every appearance, but this really rarely went beyond 60 minutes. But yeah, he was great in this.

That's because he just— you just— he wouldn't stop sprinting, would he? He like was just trying to sprint after everything, and sometimes it was just, you know, wasted energy because you're just like, why are you sprinting after that? But when he had the crowd behind him and, you know, he would chase down lost causes and turn them into something and make things happen and. Tony Daley was playing in this one. I think he actually sets up Nick Wright's goal, the first one. And there was always all clicking, I think, in this, in this game. No more so than for Gifton Noel-Williams, who was playing up front, and a magnificent performance from him.

He was really causing their defence and Paul Butler, who we will come on to in a second, all sorts of problems. The goal that he scores is just an absolute sort of demonstration of what you talked about earlier, Matt, in terms of his ability to sort of the magnetic chest where the ball would just— he could appear in a crowd of players the ball dropping out of the sky and somehow just make the— suck the ball towards him and kill it dead. And this one's from a throw-in from Ben Iroha, which is probably one of the worst long throws I've ever seen because it's so high.

The arc is incredible.

Yeah, he just sort of launches it up into the moon. It's like, what are you— that is just not how you take a throw-in. And I don't know why he was taking it because it gave everyone half an hour to organise underneath it. But for some reason You know, Gifton had sensed where it was going before everyone else and he stakes out his turf. And because he was so strong, no one was able to sort of muscle around him and head it clear. So he takes it down, almost like leans back to take it on the chest to take the sting out of it, and then swivels and volleys it in. And Vicarage Road goes absolutely nuts.

But of course, the really sad thing about this game is that, you know, shortly after that, Paul Butler had enough and went absolutely through the back of him. Broke his leg. Gifton actually tries to— he sort of tries to run it off initially, but it is a bad nasty knee break as a result of that tackle. Not even a booking, I think, for Paul Butler. And I think it's fair to say Gifton was never quite— it wasn't— we never saw him quite the same player again, or we just don't know what his career trajectory would have been without that injury because He'd already been an England Under-18 player, he was on the verge of being called up to England Under-21s. He'd really been growing into himself this season, I think, hadn't he? And yeah, and it was— yeah, it's still one of my great sadnesses of this Watford era is that we never got to see his full progression of the player that.

He might have become. Obviously, it wasn't the end of his career and he did come back, but I don't— it never felt like he had quite the same sparkle. But what do you think, Matt?

Yeah, I think it's really sad, and I was reminded of that watching this video, because, yeah, he was on the verge of becoming something quite special. And I suppose it's easy to romanticise that, given the trouble that he was in after this injury, afflicted him with a kind of arthritic complaint, I think, didn't it, as he came back. I mean, who knows, he may have been the second coming of Luther Blissett, or he may have fallen away like so many others who had bright starts. But I think, probably, the former was more likely of the two. He seemed to have it all. Wasn't brilliant in the air, but that's something that he could have picked up as his career progressed. But yeah, a great touch, a knack of being in the right place.

And sometimes with players like Gifton, they graduate from the youth team solely on account of their physicality. But I think Gifton, as a 16-year-old, there was more to his game than that already. So I think his progression into the first team was well deserved. And yeah, it was, it was really sad. I remember the injury the challenge, if you can call it that. I was sat in the— for some reason I can't remember what it was, but we were set in the Lower Rous that day and kind of had a clear view across of where it was happening. But yeah, I mean,.

I like seeing Gifton now, and I'm pleased he stayed in football, and, you know, he's got at least one son that's in the game as well. And he's such a— he's got such a sparkling personality. And it's lovely to hear him talk. He doesn't seem bitter about this. Because like you say, it wasn't that this moment ended his career, but it severely affected it to the point where he would never rise to these levels really again. And played for a few other clubs. He— I remember he played for Stoke, and he might have played in Spain as well, maybe.

Did, yeah, a couple of years, a couple of clubs in Spain, I think.

Yeah, so yeah, a sad moment because, because who knows what, who knows what could have happened. But you know, he obviously, he doesn't play again this season, but I mean, he scored 10 goals, hadn't he, by the end of January? 10-ish by the end of January, which is—.

Yeah, because I think it's a good return, like that run of, you know, the couple of the home wins where we'd scored, you know, the Stockport game and the Crewe game, and he'd started— scored a couple of braces in both of those, and he was scoring more sort of proper striker's goals, I think, where he was running through on goal, getting behind the defence and finishing really well. And so it was that sort of, you know, he had that confidence. You could see, that's what I mean about his sort of, he started to sort of believe that he was going to do it, he was going to score, and his confidence was up. And I think he obviously had struggled with confidence a bit the previous season where he'd had some quite barren spells as well, and he was still very so young.

Yeah, he was still a teenager, wasn't he? Born in 1980. Yeah, I mean, he would be, he would be about to turn 19, I think, or maybe had just turned 19.

So yeah, I mean, he's— you're right, he doesn't seem to sort of hold grudges about it. He doesn't seem to be particularly bitter about it. I think Watford fans are probably a lot more bitter about it than he is because yeah, I would say so, entirely cynical and brutal challenge from Paul Butler, who was just a player who's been completely outplayed and bullied by a teenager and reacted by breaking his leg. So Yeah, I don't think I've forgiven Paul Butler for that one, and I don't think I ever will. But I'm not a particularly— not in a forgiving mood, Matt. So I think— no, we hold grudges.

We hold grudges.

We hold them well. That brings us to the end of January, and although it was a tremendous victory, famous victory, lots of people remember that one against a very good Sunderland side. The loss of Gifton is significant, I think, because he was playing, he had become a, you know, a regular starter in the first team, and we hadn't had none of the other strikers in our books were scoring regularly for the team. So that did pose a bit of a question for the side, didn't it, Matt, going into, going into Feb and beyond?

Yeah, indeed. One of the solutions obviously is to, is to stick Mooney back up front, and that's, that's pretty much what Taylor does. We have a game against Bradford away, and Bradford are, I think, the surprise package of the season. They're in second at this point, and, you know, they're not keeping up with Sunderland, but they're, they're doing well. We played rubbish and lost 2-0. It could have been more. After that, we play Huddersfield at home.

We draw that 1-1, but Mooney scores in that match, you know, restored to the attack. I think our strikers— I mean, who have we got left? We've got Alan Smart, who's kind of intelligent, likes to, likes the ball to his feet. Mooney's kind of the one I think really that's going to give us a bit more of that aerial prowess that I mentioned a few months ago. He scores in that match. We go to QPR, which I guess QPR is pretty much our local derby, isn't it, around this time, with Luton languishing in the division below. So probably the closest team to us.

And Graham Taylor kind of shakes up the team as well. He put Mooney up front but then makes a few other changes as well. I think he makes 4 changes for this match and includes Tommy Smith on the bench, who'd had a couple of appearances off the bench in the previous season. And it all works, we win 2-1, Nicky Wright scores the first goal and it's Chamberlain's assist, it's a kind of a booted kick down the field and Wright, I think, lets it bounce once or twice, but it's bouncing high and he catches it on the volley over the QPR keeper and into the far corner. And Tommy Smith comes on passes the ball, it goes out wide, it comes back in again, and he scores with his second touch of the game. So great impact off the bench for young Tommy Smith, and Paul Goldsmith in our mentions reminds us that he's a young skinny lad, but he's one of our own, and Smith would go on to affect a few more seasons to come.

I read an interesting thing because I was looking at reading an interview with Ronnie Rosenthal on the Watford Legends website where he talks about this season and how— because by the, you know, by this point, obviously we haven't really seen Rosenthal. Now, he had an injury, didn't he, at the start of the season, and then he's not been able to get back into the team. And there was a training session because Tommy Smith had started to get into the first team squad. And that's what I think was sort of making Rosenthal start to question whether he still had a, you know, a future in the games. He's 36 now and although he sort of fought his way back to fitness, he wasn't. Getting picked to be on the bench because Taylor was giving Tommy Smith the nod.

He challenged Tommy Smith to a sprint race to sort of test himself to see, well, like, what basically what he still had in the tank. And he says Tommy Smith beat him by a couple of yards, and that was when he knew, like, he was done, basically. It was like the youngsters come up, and because he was like, I always had my pace, was always like my main asset, and if I don't have that to rely on anymore, then I'm not gonna be the player that I was. And, you know, so that was sort of like where he knew that it was a sort of beginning of the end for him. I just love the idea of him being like the old man, like, "Youngster, come over here." Summoning him, yeah. "You're gonna have a, you're gonna sprint." "I challenge you to a duel." Yeah, a duel, a death match. Like, only one can survive.

Yeah, exactly, yeah. I think, I mean, maybe we'll talk a bit more about Rosenthal when we come to the end of the season and look back on it as a piece, but I think he was really doing the— he was a good conduit, I think, between the manager and the team. He was the most experienced player. Like I said, he wasn't getting in the team, but I've seen countless players talk about what a great influence he was and how good he was at kind of, you know, communicating all that he could through that lived experience that he had and how he was able to help players like Tommy Smith, you know, help them develop as players. You know, like how wide players and our forwards, they could all learn a lot from Rosenthal, even if Rosenthal wasn't there kind of doing it on the pitch anymore.

Yeah, agree. Absolutely. A good character.

Yeah. And February, obviously a short month, so we only fit 4 games into the month. And another poor performance on TV, another one that you were there for. Oh God, home to Swindon, a 1-0 loss. Tell us how bad that was.

Oh, this was a— this was like Grimsby at home when we lost 3-0 territory. It was like— it was— there was nothing redeeming about this game. It was pissing with rain, it was cold, dark. There was virtually no one there, I think because it was a Friday night on the TV cameras. It was those people just could not be asked. It was such a miserable evening. So there's only— I think there was like 7,500.

There was just a sort of windswept, wet, empty Vicarage Road, and we barely had a shot on goal. Swindon had won and scored and won the game 1-0, there was the start of grumblings which might sound surprising, I think, after the start of the season that we'd had. But some fans were starting to get on players' backs a bit. I think it always happens a little bit, doesn't it? But it's still— I remembered this because I remembered there were— there was that— this game in particular, I remember there were like quite a lot of anger from a few fans, not from everyone. There's a lot of apathy as well.

I think people were just a bit like, oh well, we had a great start but it's, it's, it's run its course now and we're sort of drifting a bit now. And but no, some of the, some of the fans were getting a bit on the players' backs, and particularly Alan Smart. He hadn't scored for a while. He was getting, he was getting a fair bit, a fair bit of stick, which is not exactly going to do his confidence a world of good. Micah Hyde, I think you know, people thought he wasn't putting a shift in. He's one of those players, isn't he, Hyde, that because of the style of play, it can sometimes look like he's, he's maybe, you know, not. Effecting the game as much as you want him to.

But yeah, I mean, I think, I think it cuts both ways, doesn't it? Because at his best, you could say it makes it look effortless. Yeah, exactly. At its worst, it's like, why aren't you putting the effort in? He's saying the same thing to him, really.

You are, you are, you are. And I don't think there was any— I personally don't never question Hyde's commitment in a Watford shirt. I think he was a fantastic player for Watford. He just sometimes— he did have the odd game where he it did— he didn't seem to impose himself as much as in other games, and that just happens. And then also some fringe players like Clint Easton were getting a bit of abuse as well, which again, you know, a player who's come through the youth team. You know, relatively inexperienced and coming off the bench, not exactly the best targets for our fans. What it makes me think is that there's a— this is always, it's always been thus, hasn't it, with football?

And that you even know, you know, a club like Watford, which generally prides itself on being, you know, having a decent fan base that do, you know, give— they're fairly patient and give their players time. And, you know, reward hard work and effort, and they don't expect to win every single game. I think in a modern era, you feel like there's less of that because of social media, and everyone's very reactive. And sometimes it feels a bit— it can feel a bit like the older fans are being a bit sort of lectury to the younger fans, like, oh, you think this is bad? You should have been there. Which I'm sure if you're a younger fan, it's like the most infuriating thing in the world. But actually, it was— it's not really a generational thing.

I think it's more that there are some fans who just get— they vent, they let it out by getting very angry, and they like to just turn on the players a bit, and they choose their targets, and they just, you know, for whatever reason, they think that's okay. And other supporters don't do that and don't feel comfortable doing that. And it's— but it's always been there, hasn't it? And it was there then. And yeah. It was, but it was definitely, you know, it's not, I'm probably making over, giving this a bit more credence than necessary in terms of like the, you know, how significant the change in mood was. But I think I'm just doing it to make the point that from the start of the season that we'd had and the excitement and enthusiasm through particularly the first half of the season, it started to, it's been a fairly miserable month February with that win from QPR aside, and going into March, it wasn't looking a hell of a lot better and didn't really get a lot better.

The results was when were not improved as March rolled forwards. Lost away at Ipswich lost away at Sheffield United conceded 6 over those 2 games, was 3-2 at Ipswich and 3-0 at Sheffield United. I think the Sheffield United game was— performance is probably better than the result, but there's nothing to suggest that an upturn in results is around the corner. Went to Oxford United. This was my only trip to the Manor Ground. Again, not a particularly memorable one a 0-0 draw, very forgettable. Oxford were really poor sides, but we didn't really impose ourselves on them.

Did you ever go to the Manor Ground, Matt?

No, not a ground that I've ever visited. Do you enjoy it?

The ground is like— it's a nice little compact ground. Yeah, I remember walking past a bowls club to get to it. It was, you know, it felt very much like you were going to a non-league side and not a second-tier side. It was a really sort of a tiny little, tiny little place and we're very sort of shallow but steep away terrace. So you were sort of felt like you were practically on the pitch. But apart from that no, it was a very uneventful nil-nil draw.

We did wear yellow shorts with our weight. Yeah. So there was further kit problems in a match against Oxford.

Yeah, other kit problems. And we signed Guy Whittingham on loan as extra support for the striking options here because as we've been discussing, you know, form has nosedived pretty much since Gifton's injury. We've, we've not been able to pick up results. Yeah, you know, we've got that one win at QPR in February, now into mid-March and we're, we are not winning football matches. We're more often not, we're losing and we're not really scoring any goals. The other notable thing to happen here, which Matt, I don't know if you want to tell us something about, is the.

The man in the pink shirt.

Yeah, so I think a lot of people know the story now, although they probably didn't know it as it was happening. Graham Taylor had been introduced to Kieran Cosgrove, who you may— listeners might know as a pink shirt man, who appears in a number of the photos and videos from this point onwards. He was kind of involved in the burgeoning field of sports psychology and had worked in America some big sports teams and sports clubs. And he's kind of, yeah, he's been introduced to Taylor, and Taylor obviously remembers this and calls him up because he needs a good bit of motivational thinking, you know, he needs some PMA at this club, and Cosgrove is considered to be the best person to deliver that. So he comes in and he brings in lots of analogies from like the world of like Gaelic football or hurling or something like that, and rugby union, you know, he's transferring these kind of techniques that have served him earlier in his career and sort of sees how— because he doesn't seem to know very much about football, but what he does seem to know is, you know, how a team can be greater than the sum of its parts, which, as we've established, is really the key point about this Watford team, you know, when it's good, it is, you know, it is better than the sum of its parts, you know, we don't have the world's most technically able players, but got a lot of fighting spirit and stuff like that. And Cosgrove is kind of brought in to help us rediscover that a bit, and I think we all know that it works.

It will take a game or two to kick in.

Doesn't have an instant impact, I think it's fair to say, but not quite.

But it correlates very closely.

It does correlate very closely, you're absolutely right. The following game, following week, is a home match against Bury, a 0-0 draw, very much a bore draw, best forgotten. Had a few of those in recent months. Whittingham and David Perpetuini make their debuts. This is also, it's worth noting, one of our listeners, Jamie Parkins, who shall for the rest of this podcast and the following episode be known as Jamie Robinson Crusoe Parkins, because he leaves for Fiji after this match. And as we shall find out, he doesn't find out how the season concludes until August.

So we'll return to—.

Yeah, no electricity, no internet, no email. It's just message in a bottle for Jamie Parkins.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm picturing Tom Cruise in Cast Away, just sort of just sky-wandering a beach, just scavenging rubbish that's being washed up. And anyway, no spoilers, no spoilers. We'll we'll wait till we get to the end of the season to talk about Jamie's adventures. But we end the month, we end the month in 8th with no win in 5 matches, 7 points and 3 places off the playoffs. That's a lot of ground to make up going into April. Since Boxing Day, I mean, this is where it is to sort of really illustrate how things have tailed off since Boxing Day.

It's played 13, won 2, drawn 6, and lost 5. That is not promotion-winning form, is it, Matt?

No, it's not. No, it's, it's, it's very much lower mid-table form, isn't it? So it's no surprise to see that we've dropped from. You know, we've been mostly around fifth-ish, haven't we? Yeah, we're up in third in the very early part of the season, but yeah, we have dropped away. And it's more the point gap, isn't it? You know, it's already 7 points, which is a lot, you know, going in with not many matches to go.

You're looking at reclaiming back up practically a point a match, which is a tall order.

It is a tall order. So where do we feel, you know, just generally, I suppose, this season is heading at this stage? Do you have. Can you remember how you felt about it at this stage? Like what you really thought going— because were you still enthused? Were you still engaged in this season? Were you just sort of going through the motions a bit and turning up because you felt obliged to?

I think that I was probably still slightly more optimistic than most, but I was starting to feel a bit deflated about how it was going, that it wasn't going to be a fairy tale. Yeah, as a Watford fan, I think I tend to give managers and players kind of a little bit more benefit of the doubt than some other fans. I'm not saying that's a positive or a negative, it's just a thing, you know. I get it wrong as many times as I get it right, but I was kind of inclined that they probably weren't gonna, you know, get back up to 4th, 5th, whatever. But there was still the potential to turn it in. It could still be a good season, you know, if they, if they, if they could win half of the remaining games, it could still be more than respectable finish put us in place for a good season next year perhaps. I mean, that was kind of— from memory, that's kind of how I was feeling about it.

What about you?

Yeah, I think I went into this season, I felt like every game I saw us as the underdog. So anything positive that we got out of it, I was really delighted with because it felt like— always felt to me like all the other teams, bigger sides than us, or they've got better players than us, or they're a more established team than us, or whatever it was. I kind of mentally in my head made us the underdog in pretty much every game, so I never expected us to win. And so every time we did, I was absolutely delighted. But because we'd had such a positive start, I had started to dream in sort of the first half of the season that, oh, maybe we would just hang in there and, you know, maybe. And the Premier League had seemed such like a sort of promised land. Yeah.

That had seemed so far away for most, you know, pretty much the entirety of this decade. It never really seemed like a realistic prospect. So just having had it dangled there just for a few months, and I knew it was early season, stages and not to get carried away. But yeah, I felt because we were slipping further and further away from it and there was no signs that a swing around was in the making, I still held hope. Like you, I think I still held hope because I was— I wouldn't— I don't think I would do now because I think I'm old and cynical now and I just, you know, these days. I'm more likely to just think everything's going to be rubbish. But I think then I, because I was younger, I was just sort of naturally more optimistic and I wanted to still believe.

So I was still going with just a sort of a. A little flicker of hope still there that something could happen, but it felt like a massive long shot at this stage.

I felt like I was less confident in the players, but I was still extremely confident in Taylor. Yeah, you know, he'd really—. I wasn't around for his glory period in the '80s, but he'd really captured my heart, I think, by this point. And that's not going to be a unique opinion amongst our listenership and indeed this Zoom call. But yeah, and I was really kind of— I really put all of my faith and trust in him, and I knew that if anyone was going to be able to do something, it was going to be him, or it was going to be a man wearing a pink shirt.

Yeah. And it wasn't— he was in— he clearly hadn't been infallible during this period, and there'd been some absolute stinkers, but I felt the same. I think you just having him there, he was still— he still had that enthusiasm, and he hadn't given up. And so because he still had enthusiasm for every game, it meant you shouldn't, because he was still like— you still— he was approaching every game with the same sort of drive and enthusiasm, even after missing a bit of the season in hospital. So I think, I think you're right. I think, I think his presence is probably what was different. If it had been a Steve Perryman season or a Glenn Roeder season and it started to go this way, you'd have kind of been like, well, yeah, that's probably it then.

But I think with Taylor. You just— it just meant that there was something there to cling on to a bit longer, I suppose. So we're not going to do our usual roundup of the season because obviously the season hasn't concluded, but we've already covered a lot. So we are going to pause this episode here and we will resume in part 2 of the 1998-99 season to see how the season concluded and to talk through our shared memories and experiences of that run-in of the season. And thank you to everyone who's already contributed their thoughts Please do continue to share with us on @OhMyWordPod on Twitter, and I'd also love to see some more pictures if anyone's got pictures of this season, and particularly that run-in, then please do share that with us as well. So look forward to concluding this season, and we'll see you next time for Part 2. So thank you, Matt.

Cheers, see you everybody.

Oh my word! No wonder the smiles are there.