Southern League Division 1, 10/4/15
Watford 2
Scorers: Edmonds, Waterall, quite a few disallowed as usual
Norwich City 1
 
Tommy Waterall's finest hour
Possibly not quite utterly true and maybe slightly confused report by Nicholas Ralph

This was an unspeakably critical day for the Magpies (as we were then known). The previous weekend - Easter - had been a complete disaster. Four matches in five days had produced a lone victory against the Hammers, while Luton Town did the double over us (4-2 at Watford - ring any bells ?) and we had looked less than championship calibre the previous Tuesday in losing narrowly at Swindon, 0-6. For statistics freaks - of which I am one - the situation immediately before this match, with each club having three matches to play, was:

Watford - 46
Reading - 45
Cardiff City - 43
West Ham United - 42
Northampton Town - 41
Swindon Town - 41

You can imagine how fed up we all were after losing at Swindon, can't you ? And Reading were to meet Cardiff on this day, too. So it was with a heightened sense of occasion and anxiety that we all jumped on the train from Croxley to Watford Met station, so handily located for Cassiobury Park. There was an additional level of excitement in the air, too, since we had read that Royalty would be in attendance (although we knew that HM the K would not be there - something about a conference on long trees in St. Helier). We were, then, a bit disappointed to find out that the reference to the 'Duck of Gloucester' in the Watford Observer had not been a misprint after all: the animal in question waddled out to entertain us at half-time and was a surprising improvement on the 150-piece bands we normally got back in those days.

The boys took the field to the strains of the club's theme tune of the day - the second movement of Rachmaninoff's Trio Elegiaque in D Minor (Opus No. 9) - played with great aplomb by the ladies of the WFC Tea Circle. If I may take a slight detour here, for a moment, I would mention to all of you latter-day supporters that Watford has always had very strong musical connections. Tchaikovsky and Skriabin were both known to be football daft, and would hop over to Cassiobury Park at every opportunity. Glazunov, as you know, actually played on the wing during the halcyon days of the 1870s, scoring a record seven symphonies for the club during 1876-77. Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Bortkiewicz, and Balakirev - sometimes accompanied by Lyapunov - were regular visitors at the Crookery (as the west end of the Park was known). But it was the great Rachmaninoff himself - with no less than six season tickets - who could not stay away from Watford matches. But for his personal intervention during the boardroom crises of the early 1900s, the club could not have continued. It was only fitting, then, that one of his compositions should be so warmly embraced as the club's own. Happily, the musical connection continues to this day - why else do you think that Watford is twinned with Novgorod, the town nearest to Rachmaninoff's birthplace ? Anyway, enough of all that.

In the match programme (price one farthing, and a rip-off at that), we were - all of us - alarmed to note that the referee would be a Roger Elflord. This gentleman, though he denied it vehemently, seemed to have a penchant for awarding penalties against us - for example, in the game at Exeter, where he had given nine in the first half alone. In the event, he had a 'quiet' game, and the story was that Nobby Venables, the Watford groundskeeper, had put a little extra gin in Elflord's tea just before kick-off. It was certainly refreshing to see the man drifting around the pitch with a twinkle in his eye, dropping the whistle, and generally behaving like the complete berk he really was.

We pressed forward relentlessly from the off. Using our by now trademark 0-0-10 formation, with Harry Bulling playing in the centrifugal role, we looked both graceful and likely. How could this same team have disgraced itself so, and in Wiltshire for goodness' sake ? Anyhow, Bulling stroked the ball about, with short and long passes beyond critical reproach (let's face it, none of us really understood a thing about the game back then). Hastings, Green, Edmonds, and Waterall ran and ran till their legs nearly fell off, such was their work-rate. And in the middle of the park, Kennedy, the Gregory twins, Stewart, and White locked into Bulling's scheming like parts of a jigsaw. We were absolutely brilliant.

It came as no surprise, then, when Norwich opened the scoring with an utterly unfair goal by Flock, their team horse - he used to deputise quite often for Norwich even though he usually pulled their bus to the game as well. Skilly had no chance as Flock leaped fourteen feet in the air and used the 'hoof of God' to nail the lead for the Budgerigars (they didn't become the Canaries until 1950, I believe, and used to wear green, yellow, blue, brown, white, and red strip - garrish, even by 1915 standards).

We refused to let this get us down and immediately set about getting an equalizer. It didn't come until the 88th minute, though, and there was much wailing (the Russian composers having found the vodka again) and gnashing of teeth in between times. Not even cries of 'There's only one Jabez McMorran' could rouse the team to stick the orb in the appropriate place and feeling in the crowd began to rise to dangerous levels. Would there be another outbreak of hooliganism, as there had been in 1902 when two youths ran riot and stole tuppence from the main turnstile ? Or would the crowd keep its head ?

Peter Ronald broke the tension by scoring from a direct free kick, although this was - inevitably - disallowed by Elflord in one of his more lucid moments. On the hour, manager Harry Kent would have liked to send on a substitute, but of course he couldn't. Instead, he stood up (you should know that this was considered an extreme gesture by a manager in those days) and pointed his finger at some distant object. We all took this as a sign for a change in tactics but Fred, a self-professed expert on the game, told us that he was simply pointing to where the Watford Observer clock would one day be, on a ground yet to be imagined.

Norwich somehow dodged every bullet. Their goalkeeper, the inestimable Mike Walker, had a truly amazing game. Sadly for Norwich his absence, after a collision with Flock, was the key to a Watford comeback. Eddie Edmonds latched on to a fantastic cross from some bloke in the crowd (the referee by now, you understand, being somewhat out of it) and stuck it away for the equalizer. Two minutes left ....

The BBC called on my cell-phone to say that the Reading-Cardiff game had kicked-off late, so the tension grew still more. We didn't want Reading to win that one: their team was made up exclusively, under an early sponsorship deal, of the British Olympic Diving squad - the 'Flying Nogans'.

Could we eke out a winner ? In the last minute (the 104th - Elflord had lost his watch, and the linesmen had been co-opted into the crowd) Fred Gregory rose majestically above the crowd in the Norwich goalmouth - he used to do this sometimes, none of us understood why. But he was fouled in the process, and up came Tommy Waterall to take the resulting very direct free kick. Actually, we were a bit nervous about this, because Eddie Edmonds used to take all the penalties. But for some reason he was lying in the middle of the pitch, with his hand over his eye at the time, so Tommy got the job he'd always wanted.

Shades of Chris Waddle and Stuart Pearce as he sent it flying over the bar. But Elflord, completely out of character, said that Norwich's replacement goalie, a certain W. Churchill, had moved and ordered the kick re-taken. This produced much the same result. Elflord, now reclining on the turf behind the goal, berated Churchill for his antics, and sent him off.

The next bit's rather fuzzy, but there was definitely a pitch invasion. British Tommies, led by Rowan Atkinson, stormed on to meet the challenge from a brigade of blokes wearing elaborate pointy hats, one of who was called Franz Beckenbauer, and the football that ensued was utterly horrendous. Elflord had completely lost it at this stage, and allowed the game to go on for four years, by which time neither team had many players left.

The Football Association then ordered that the penalty be retaken one last, final, absolutely ultimate time. Norwich were allowed to use their new 'keeper, a certain A. Brick-Wall, but he was no match for our Tommy who blasted the winner: 2-1, and we could go home at last. On Sportsnight with the Coal-Man that evening (God, the BBC had the strangest ideas back then), Rachmaninoff was interviewed by Frankie Buff, and made it clear that this was the greatest night of his life, at least since the premiere of his Piano Concerto #2 which he fervently hoped would one day be played in Watford Town Hall (it was, in 1988, by Evgeny Kissin).

Watford's victory was matched by Reading's loss. West Ham also lost, so Watford were now three points clear with two games to go. We won them both (at Gillingham, 3-2, and at Brighton, 2-1) and took our first ever really major important fantastic trophy, the Southern League. We didn't do anything worth writing about for another 45 years.