Football League Division 4, 16/4/60
Watford 5
Team (a-z): Bell, Benning, Chung, Gregory, Holton, Nicholas, Porter, Sanchez, Uphill, Walker, Warn (gk)
Scorers: Gregory, Benning, Holton 3 (2 pens)
Gateshead 0
Attendance: 13,495, felt like 60,000
 
Pivotal
Report by Nicholas Ralph

This match was probably pivotal, since it really did confirm that Watford had embarked on a great end-of-season run which just might win them promotion, following so closely on the previous day's 4-2 walloping of Chester. I was at the time a small person, and football neophyte, who had seen a few good games that season and had come to expect lots of goals, and a Watford victory, pretty much as a matter of course. At the time, though, promotion was a long way from certain, and the newly minted-Hornets needed a lot of points from their last six games (they ended up getting ten out of twelve).

Gateshead came out in white shirts and black shorts, and looked at first to be far stronger, fitter, and cleverer than their lowly position, and dismal away record, implied as they stroked the (I think) orange footballs about with carefree and horribly unnerving accuracy at 2:50. But, before a ball had been kicked in earnest, their 'keeper - whose name I swear was Williamson even though the record books say he left them the year before - decided to warm himself up by swinging, orang-utang like, along the Rookery End goal frame, pausing in the centre to test the bar's weight-bearing limits. He came very close to breaking it, and managed unintentionally to relieve the communal anxiety - how could a team with a clown for a goalie possibly bother us ? Still, there were nagging doubts...

The game, like most that season, was played at a hundred miles an hour, despite the absence of regulars like Vince McNeice, George Catleugh, and Barry Hartle. My anxiety, heightened further by their non-appearance, was quickly dispelled, though. As I remember it, Gateshead never once touched the ball (this may not be quite right).

Cliff Holton and Dennis Uphill were of course universally expected to score in every match. On this day, Uphill must have come close at least eight times (seriously) but it was the man himself who stole the show with a second hatrick in 24 hours, to supplement the earlier goals from the wingers. The mental picture I carry of Cliff to this day has him whacking the ball - and ye Gods, he really could whack it - from 25 yards or so towards the Gateshead goal (a big reason why this game is so enduringly important for me) with the inevitable result. In fact, two of his goals were penalties, both thoroughly deserved, of course.

At some point during the game their 'keeper and full-back managed to run backwards into each other while another player was being treated at the other end of the park. The already-long delay was considerably extended as they too received treatment, and we all worked hard to do the polite thing and muffle the giggles. Actually, I think this might have been at the Workington game (we won 3-2, should have been 8-0) some months earlier because the goalie wore a shocking pink jersey, and 'Williamson' definitely was wearing the standard bottle green. All the same, it was the sort of incident which should have happened against Gateshead.

The most vivid emotional recollection is that - despite the overwhelming euphoria which accompanied a 5-0 win even in that season of multiple high scores - I left the ground still very worried. As with all crucial times, you had to be there to understand. Pending away jaunts (which I knew I would not be taking in person) to other planets such as Chester, Rochdale, and Workington, the return match with Rochdale, and a finale at home against worthy champions Walsall, all looked to me to be pretty much insurmountable barriers to my own plans for third division football. And you had to live through the next couple of weeks as we went over and over and over the possibilities of the situation until we heard that we'd beaten Workington in all their pinkness in the penultimate match of ther season.

I think that there's a lot of truth to the idea that the world, and football or whatever your sporting preference, is never more wondrous and exciting that when you're ten. The first promotion to the second division in 1969, the amazing achievements under Graham Taylor, the beginning of yet another new era under G. Roeder Esq., all have their wonderfully piquant and engaging points. But for me, the whole thing really started with games against Barrow, Bradford PA, Gateshead, Southport, and Workington - most of all, poor old Gateshead. They gave us a match which we absolutely dominated and which undoubtedly helped to haul us up out of Division Four, while effectively confirming their own impending exit from the league. Sort of marvellous and sad all at once, I thought - and still do.