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BLIND, STUPID AND DESPERATE
 
The Hall Of Arse:
Gary Chivers
by Matt Rowson
 
Dave Bassett. Responsible for the demolition of GT's exciting young 1987 side, ultimately to blame for our relegation, and also answerable for our subsequent years of oppression, Jack Petchey, Kerry Dixon, the Gulf Crisis and World Poverty.

If Bassett ever makes the mistake of developing a stomach ulcer in an unfriendly neck of the woods (Bury ?), he can expect the Pinochet treatment, and once brought to trial in Watford one of the many additional charges to be born in consideration will read as follows :

"That in November 1987 you did wilfully and with malicious intent drop Nigel Gibbs from the first team".

(Okay, technically Gibbs was ill and not given his place back. But hey, Dave, you told us Trevor Senior was a footballer. You live by the sword, pal, you die by the sword.)

Gary Chivers was the chosen replacement. A free-transfer signing from Queens Park Rangers, he was slow and simply not good enough. More importantly, he was neither David Bardsley or Nigel Gibbs. In the timing of his brief stay at Vicarage Road he will, just like Senior, forever be remembered as one of the henchmen in Bassett's malignant regime.

After an unspeakably awful home defeat by Chelsea, who were also to be relegated that season, I lurked in the bar underneath the East Stand having been brought in by my Aunt, then a steward at the ground. Chivers was drinking with a couple of mates, which was not, in itself, a problem. But he was laughing. He was having a good time. We had just lost 3-0 at home, and this bastard didn't care. And then, with my childhood, GT-inspired illusions about the Watford family crumbling around my ears, it happened. They started slagging off Luther Blissett.

Chivers left Watford after less than six months, and joined Brighton where he stayed for a long time. He later scored against Watford, but this is hardly a heinous crime.... Furlong and Barnes have both done it. His crime is not even the involvement in the relegation season, from which Nigel Gibbs and Luther himself both recovered. His crime was to shatter my innocence, and for that I will never forgive him.