Studio guests together tomorrow on Watford’s ‘Hive Live’ show as the Hornets travel to Queens Park Rangers, there seemed no better moment than now to proudly announce the second and third Hornets Ambassadors as Lloyd Doyley and Gavin Mahon.
Sitting fifth in the all-time appearance-makers list, Doyley’s appearances total of 443 is slightly less well-known than his total goals count for the club…of two.
The first of those set pulses aquiver among the Vicarage Road faithful on a chill December evening at home to QPR in 2009; a diving header, no less, to level the scores on the night and ignite a double wave of celebrations in the stands; firstly for a Watford goal and then a huge secondary roar once the scorer had been identified.
This makes light, though, of a quite magnificent contribution to the Hornets across a 20-plus-year association with the club – 14 seasons of which spent in first-team action as a never-say-die defender and arguably the club’s best man-marker of recent generations.
Nearly 10,000 came to pay tribute at his Testimonial match, against Spurs in August 2012, yet Lloyd’s final Hornets appearance would come a lot later – in December 2014.
Gavin’s 200-plus game Watford career included a rollercoaster of very different seasons.
From the wage deferrals of Autumn 2002, via the obvious high-point of skippering the Hornets to promotion via the glory of a play-off final victory in 2006, to the ignominy of him being hastily cast aside by his manager Aidy Boothroyd in early 2008, Gavin has known the ups and downs of the game in a yellow shirt – never mind anywhere else during a long career.
Arriving on Ray Lewington’s recommendation late on during Gianluca Vialli’s year in charge, the commanding midfielder went on to establish a great relationship with the man who’d previously coached him at Brentford.
Gavin broke into the Watford team in the full-back positions but made the centre of the pitch his own to win the 2003/04 ‘Player of the Season’ award, before a sharp rise in his and the team’s fortunes under Boothroyd from the spring of 2005.
Lloyd and Gavin are remembered as part of Boothroyd’s unlikely promotion heroes of the 2005/06 campaign, and they’ll be reminiscing about their golden days with the Golden Boys as part of our Hive Live programming tomorrow.
Hornets Ambassadors
To find out more about the Hornets Ambassadors collective – and to read the profiles of the former players already announced – click HERE.
