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, Colin Payne writes about the man responsible for the very first goal scored at Vicarage Road in the top tier of English football.
In glorious August 1982 sunshine, Pat Rice leads the Watford team onto a green and lush Vicarage Road pitch. The crowd is predictably buoyant and eager, the atmosphere special. Statistics say another 8,000 people could have fit into the ground that day, but it’s hard to see where, as the terrace swayed and moved as one. This is the Hornets’ first game in Division One, and everything matches the occasion.
Throughout the early stages Watford harry and pressurise visitors Everton; no ball is considered lost, and nothing left unchallenged. Four decades on ‘the press’ would come into vogue; this looked remarkably like it played to perfection. With the benefit of hindsight and YouTube it’s clear this Watford side are special: the level of fitness and ability belie the fact that within the starting line-up there are no summer signings, no big-name recruits brought in to bolster Graham Taylor’s newly-promoted side. This is the team that took us up, and they are clearly worth their places.
The ground echoes with the refrains of ‘Watford-Watford’ and ‘C’mon you ‘Orns’. The songbook was limited back then, but the two-song repertoire is belted out loud and proud, the joy of the day is all too evident.
Twenty-one minutes in, Gerry Armstrong is brought down, midway between the 18-yard box and the halfway line. Nigel Callaghan fires the free-kick into the box just an inch too far ahead of the on-coming Ross Jenkins, whose toe sees the ball edged to Armstrong, just a foot from the goal-line.
In truth any of us could have knocked it in from there, had we been on the field, but we weren’t, and Armstrong was, and so Watford’s first top-flight goal was scored. The ground erupts, Armstrong is swamped by his teammates, and history is made. Watford go on to win the game 2-0, the second goal even less of a candidate for Goal of the Season, as Neville Southall walks the ball over his own goal-line in taking hold of an effort from Rice.
Watford had started life in the big time as they meant to go on. That season would see them achieve even more remarkable feats and memorable occasions, but no one else could score that first-ever goal.
It had been a monumental summer for Ulsterman Armstrong. Prior to then he was best known among Watford fans for costing £250,000 from Spurs and not being Luther Blissett or Jenkins. He had arrived from White Hart Lane after five years in which he scored 10 goals in 84 games.
Graham Taylor had used him well, and some of his best moments in a yellow shirt had been when stripping off the dark blue romper suit and coming on as a substitute, where his undoubted athleticism, strength and bursts of energy could change games.
But it was for his exploits during the World Cup in Spain, just a few weeks before his historic goal at Vicarage Road, that Armstrong will be best remembered. Selected to play for his native Northern Ireland he had missed the opener against Yugoslavia, which ended 0-0, and scored in the second game against Honduras, which finished one apiece.
This put him in the Watford record books as the first player to score in a World Cup tournament while at the club. Yet his pinnacle was still to come. Needing to beat the hosts, Spain, if they were to progress any further, Northern Ireland certainly faced a challenge to which few expected them to rise.
That evening in Valencia will forever be remembered, not just by those residing in the six counties, but anyone who watched it. With a line-up also featuring Pat Jennings and John McClelland, it was a display that really was the stuff of legends. Armstrong scored the only goal of the game, steaming through the middle of the pitch before combining with Billy Hamilton who crossed for him to fire home, after the Spanish keeper had fumbled the ball.
Mal Donaghy’s dismissal with 30 minutes left resulted in the men in white and green shirts facing an onslaught, but to a crescendo of whistles and jeers they held out. A further Armstrong goal in the second group stage in a 4-1 defeat against France saw him finish top British scorer in the tournament.
He would feature in a further 18 games for Watford, scoring just one more goal, before returning to Spain to play for Real Mallorca. In truth his standing in the Watford all-time greats list is probably behind most fans’ front-runners, but his place in the record books can never be taken away. Armstrong scored Watford’s first top-flight goal.
