In this series, writers from The Watford Treasury and YBR! magazines trace the varied careers of players who developed at Watford.
First featured in last season’s matchday programme, Geoff Wicken writes about a player who joined Watford from university and enjoyed a long career before turning to football administration.
It seems ridiculous now. There we were in 1982/83, our first season in Division One, jousting at the top of the table with Liverpool and Manchester United. Then Graham Taylor signed a university student, and within two months had put him in the first-team. But it didn’t feel odd at the time. In those extraordinary days anything seemed possible. Why not go top of the entire Football League – with four of the team having been Division Four regulars five years earlier? Why not cane Sunderland 8-0? Why not put a university student in the team? Easy!
Richard Jobson’s playing career was unusual. He was scouted in 1982 while in the second year of his degree course at Nottingham University, which he curtailed to sign at Vicarage Road. In parallel he was also playing non-league for Burton Albion – then managed by Neil Warnock, who combined that role with running his practice as a chiropodist (in-growing toenails a speciality, apparently).
The 38 games Jobson played for Watford between 1982 and 1984 began a playing career that spanned over 20 years and more than 600 first-team matches, including two more for Watford on loan 18 years after we first saw him. He finally retired as a player in May 2003 on his 40th birthday.
Most of his appearances as a young player were in midfield, where he always looked promising in an elegant, long-legged way. They included the 1983/84 FA Cup semi-final, and every game in the UEFA Cup run earlier that season. And in one of those he set up a moment for the ages.
There were many wonderful Vicarage Road nights in that first GT era – against Hull, Southampton, Nottingham Forest, Wrexham and others. Each had its own individual flavour, but the UEFA Cup victory over Kaiserslautern in September 1983 might have been the best of them all.
The years since 1977 had been extraordinary, but this was Watford, our wonderful Watford, playing European football at Vicarage Road. European football! The atmosphere crackled all night long. Injuries forced us to field a bunch of kids; they had a guy who’d played in the 1982 World Cup final. And we put them to the sword.
Down 3-1 after the first leg, we’d scored the two early goals to draw level on aggregate, by which point the atmosphere was a heady mixture of disbelief and delirium. But we wanted another to tie things up. Mid-way through the second half, the moment came.
Jobson picked the ball up in the centre-circle, powered over to the right wing with it, and hooked over a well-placed cross. Ian Richardson, at full stretch, managed to divert the ball over the goalkeeper, who fell to his knees as it dropped under the Rookery End crossbar at the perfect moment. It was magical. I defy you to watch it on YouTube and keep your heart rate under control!
But Jobson never nailed down a permanent place in Watford’s midfield – perhaps not surprisingly since Les Taylor and Kenny Jackett were such key members of the team at that time. After a while Graham Taylor switched him to centre-back, the position in which he would excel for so long elsewhere.
But with so many inexperienced defenders in the side in late 1984, and the team shipping goals, Graham decided to sign John McClelland – not exactly a bad call.
Jobson moved on first to Hull, then became part of the marvellous Oldham Athletic side of the early 1990s, even earning two England B caps under GT. He subsequently joined Leeds and, at 36, played a starring role in Manchester City’s promotion to the Premier League in 1999/2000. His final ports of call were Tranmere and Rochdale.
He became Chairman of the Professional Footballers’ Association in 2002, remaining in the post until he retired as a player. He then joined the PFA staff, rising up the ranks to his current position of Assistant Chief Executive. Rather neatly, following his 20-year career as a player, he has now had another 20-year career as a football administrator.
