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 a man who scored 48 goals to spearhead Watford’s first Football League promotion in 1959/60, including two hat-tricks at The Vic on consecutive days.
I was six when my father decided the time was right for his son to make a first visit to Vicarage Road, thereby subjecting the young boy to 63 years (and counting) of following this wonderful football club.
It was November 1959 and the opponents, in the old Division Four, were Darlington. The game resulted in a routine 2-1 home win, with the only noteworthy aspect being that Cliff Holton failed to score, a rare occurrence that season.
Inevitably though, should Cliff draw a blank, his partner-in-crime Dennis Uphill would, and such was the case on this occasion, with Uphill scoring both goals. This didn’t happen often. Big Cliff made 53 appearances that season and scored an extraordinary 48 goals. Of those 53 games, he scored in well over half of them. To be fair to the admirable Uphill, he also notched a remarkable 36 goals.
I would almost certainly have fallen head over heels for the club had Cliff been there or not, but his presence negated any possibility of rejection. Cliff was truly charismatic, in the days before footballers would routinely be described in that way.
He embodied key attributes of the most effective Watford strikers I’ve seen. He had the style and class of Livesey, the brute strength of Endean, the selfishness of Jennings, the attacking verve of Luther, the predatory eye of Johnston, the crowd-rousing ability of Mooney and a brutal approach from the penalty spot now forever associated with Troy.
Cliff was tall, elegant, good-looking, eloquent and, by all accounts, dominated the dressing room by sheer force of personality. His arrival at the club, in October 1958, had not been without the odd hiccup. Despite huge excitement locally he failed to hit the ground running, and struggled to justify the record fee (reputedly £10,000) paid to Arsenal for his services.
He scored five goals in his first 15 games and had managed 10 in 35 appearances by the end of that 1958/59 season.
Remarkably, Cliff himself remained convinced centre-half was his best position, but soon after the start of the following season he proved himself gloriously wrong, at which point things fell spectacularly into place. With a weak manager only nominally in charge, Cliff stepped up to assume control of the playing side and everything changed.
A slow start, with one win and only two goals from the first five games, gave no indication of what was about to unfold. But the goals soon flowed and by New Year over 31,000 fans were squeezing into The Vic to see Watford become the first Division Four club ever to beat a top-flight side in the FA Cup.
That was Birmingham City, beaten 2-1 in a game featuring what many believed to be Cliff’s finest goal for the club, a stunning half-volley struck on the turn. Southampton were the next big cup scalp, and the run only ended in the fifth round when an injury-hit Watford, reduced to nine fit men, went down 3-2 in front of 40,000 at Sheffield United. By then it was apparent that Watford were a Division Four club in name only, but work still needed to be done to clinch the club’s first-ever Football League promotion.
League fixtures at that time saw games played on Good Friday, Saturday and Easter Monday. With points still badly needed, Cliff scored a Vicarage Road hat-trick on the Friday afternoon against Chester, and then repeated the feat 24 hours later against Gateshead. The club, let alone star-struck six-year-olds, had seen nothing like it.
Promotion was celebrated with a 2-2 draw against Walsall under the Vicarage Road lights. Many of the 20,000 crowd poured onto the pitch at the end of a special night, roaring: “We Want Cliff!”
Things in Division Three the following season were predictably tougher, but the club still claimed a top-four finish, with Cliff chipping in with another 34 goals. But all good things come to an end and, through an inexplicable boardroom decision, Cliff was allowed to join Northampton for a ludicrous £7,000. Almost inevitably Cliff scored a hat-trick on his Cobblers debut and continued to haunt Watford.
He returned, by then wearing the colours of Crystal Palace, to record yet another hat-trick. Eventually Cliff re-joined Watford for a final cameo in the summer of 1965, but the magic had gone.
John Barnes would be the finest player I’ve seen represent the club, but for a bona-fide club legend and a true Home Ground Hero, you’d struggle to beat Big Cliff.
