In light of the recent Vicarage Road centenary celebrations, writers from The Watford Treasury magazine look back at players who performed great feats on home soil.
First featured in last season’s matchday programme, David Harrison writes about an early-1960s favourite, whose one golden season almost propelled Watford to promotion and featured a goal for the ages.
We regularly hear about finding oneself in the right place at the wrong time or, occasionally, the wrong place at the right time. But every now and then the stars align and we find ourselves precisely where we’d like to be, at the critical moment. So it was for me on the afternoon of Saturday, February 8, 1964.
I was approaching my 11th birthday and still finding my way around Vicarage Road. For younger readers, these were days when the vast majority of supporters at The Vic opted to stand rather than sit, and not only stand, but stand pretty much wherever they liked.
Under the tutelage of my dad, I had graduated from the old Main Stand (where he’d started me off, until deemed tall enough to stand) to the Vicarage Road End, where he could meet up with mates, unencumbered by an annoying child.
For the 1963/64 season, Bill McGarry built a team capable of launching a credible push for promotion to Division Two, while I had grown sufficiently to stand behind the goal and enjoy watching them.
They were pretty good to watch, too. Pat Jennings quickly became a superb keeper, destined for the very top. The fearsome Duncan Welbourne arrived during that season and became a defensive stalwart for the next decade. George Harris was a free-scoring winger as well, but the jewel in McGarry’s crown was the magnificent Charlie Livesey.
After a slow start (two goals in his first 18 Watford appearances) Charlie burst into life under the guidance of the new manager.
He soon became hugely popular with a Vicarage Road crowd desperate for a charismatic figurehead, following the inexplicable departure of Cliff Holton early in the 1961/62 season.
Big Cliff’s goalscoring exploits will never be repeated, but Charlie was probably the superior all-round footballer. The latter’s popularity may have been enhanced by the fact he was something of a flawed figure.
Profiles of Charlie invariably included references to him having been ‘a bit of a tearaway’ in his early years. In fact, there were suggestions of an early ‘brush with the law,’ while he was widely heralded as a player of considerable natural ability, but one who had struggled to deliver on that promise.
Signed from Gillingham at the age of 23, Charlie carried a distinct whiff of under-achievement. He’d played alongside Jimmy Greaves at Chelsea, but his career was already heading downhill.
First physical impressions weren’t great either. While Cliff had been big, powerful, athletic and imposing, Charlie was just big. Too big.
His partnership with the mercurial Dai Ward was no such thing. They managed 33 goals between them in 1962/63, to which Charlie’s contribution was three. But during the following summer, everything changed.
McGarry was a disciplinarian manager, standing no nonsense from anyone. Remarkably that included Charlie, to whom the new man found the key, in spectacular fashion.
Excess baggage was rapidly shed, leaving startled fans confronted by an adult version of Chelsea’s ‘Boy Wonder’. The Ward/Livesey partnership was turned on its head. Charlie scored seven in the first six games, and by October Ward had gone.
Scoring continued unabated but even better was the style he brought to a functional side, constructed in the image of a pragmatic manager.
Returning to that February Saturday in 1964, I was wedged at the bottom of the Vic Road terrace, up against the railings and right behind the goal. I was thereby granted a bird’s eye view of what remains one of the finest Watford goals I’ve seen.
The visual recollection remains surprisingly vivid, but some context is worthwhile. Oldham arrived that day as credible promotion rivals. They were in fourth place, two points behind the Hornets, and the matchday programme issued a rallying cry for supporters to ‘go to town with that Watford roar!’
The visitors wore distinctive shirts, with a broad blue central band but otherwise white. They left a lasting visual impression for some reason.
But this was Charlie’s day. He picked up the ball around halfway and simply ran clean through the Oldham defence, spurning various passing opportunities before crashing a drive past helpless keeper John Bollands. Even Holton would have struggled to match a goal like that, and it happened directly in front of me.
McGarry’s side lost at Luton on the last day, falling agonisingly short of promotion, but Charlie, on occasions almost single-handedly, had dragged a modest side to within touching distance of the Promised Land.
It was Charlie’s season, and it was unforgettable. But that goal against Oldham provides the enduring memory.
