First featured in last season’s matchday programme, Daily Mirror sports writer Mike Walters recalls some of the best individual displays he has witnessed the Hornets come up against…
Ahead of Watford’s Sky Bet Championship curtain-raiser against Queens Park Rangers on Saturday (August 5, 3pm KO), this piece focuses on a former player and manager largely associated with both sides...
Long before he became a Watford player, captain and manager, Glenn Roeder led the Hornets a merry dance - more or less - when Queens Park Rangers came to Vicarage Road in 1979.
After consecutive promotions, where they had lost at home only four times in two seasons, the learning curve was always going to present Graham Taylor’s side with a steeper gradient when they landed in the old Second Division 44 years ago. And culture shocks were not just confined to the pitch.
The 2-0 win against West Ham had been disfigured by visiting pond life picking fights and causing pockets of mayhem on the terraces. There was a sense of poetic justice when Luther Blissett’s goals put the marauding animals in their place.
Manager Taylor had also been disappointed when the Hornets rocked up at Stamford Bridge like wide-eyed tourists, lost 2-0 to Chelsea and he overheard one of his beaten players admitting: “They weren’t as good as I thought.” That defeat prompted Taylor to break up his promotion-winning squad earlier than he had planned.
But Watford were still unbeaten at The Vic when QPR descended on WD18 in October, and they deservedly led at the interval through Keith Mercer’s header, which kissed the underside of the bar before bouncing 2ft over the line and out again. No Russian linesmen, no guesswork, no hunches required - it was a definite goal.
Momentum is a strange phenomenon in football, and if the half-time tea urn and orange segments had not interrupted the Golden Boys’ impetus, they would probably have prospered.
The change of ends, however, marked a turning of the tide, and Rangers were worthy winners thanks to second-half goals from Clive Allen and Roeder, who unfurled his favourite party trick to settle the argument.
Roeder had been handed the Hoops captaincy at just 23 by manager Tommy Docherty, and he played the first eight games of the 1979/80 season in the position with which most of us associated him - at centre-half.
But the ‘Doc’ had an embarrassment of riches in central defence, and he was reluctant to leave Steve Wicks or Bob Hazell out of the side, so Roeder was moved into a midfield where, to Watford’s cost, he had more of a licence to get forward.
Although he had no blistering turn of pace, Roeder was blessed with happy feet and his enviable technique included a ‘double shuffle’ - not just a bog-standard stepover, but a move which belonged more on the dance floor than a football pitch.
He would try it regularly at Loftus Road, to voluble approval of his regular audience, and this time it proved decisive.
Picking the ball up 30 yards from goal and driving at the Hornets’ defence, he bamboozled Ian Bolton with his footwork and beat home keeper Andy Rankin with a crisp finish from the edge of the box, an outstanding goal worthy of settling any contest.
Five years later, I interviewed Roeder as my live audition for a job on Fleet Street and I enquired, through gritted teeth, how much he remembered about his winner at Vicarage Road.
“I’m glad you asked me about that goal,” he piped up. “It’s one of my favourites.” He proceeded to talk me through it in staggering detail, from the pocket of space in front of Watford’s back four to the execution of his finish low to Rankin’s left.
It would be almost a decade later, in 1989, that Roeder - then playing for Newcastle - inadvertently diverted Rick Holden’s cross-shot into his own net to settle an FA Cup third-round marathon in extra-time and spare us all a fourth replay. He signed for the Hornets later that year.
