In non-pandemic times, when I manage a trip to the Vic, or an away match I can get a ticket for, odds are I’m alone. I don’t turn up to games regularly with anyone, not since my girlfriend (now wife) told me she didn’t really care for it, even after she had witnessed the entire home run of the 98-99 season which culminated in our play-off victory against Bolton under GT. She must have known this would be like a dagger to my heart. What more, I can’t help thinking, could my team have done to snare her affections?

So I’m always in someone else’s seat in the Rookery, that random bloke who you find you’re hugging in the ecstasy of the moment. I’m never short of people to hug when the goals go in. For me, a trip to the Vic is like a holy pilgrimage, back to my place of birth – Watford General Hospital on Vicarage Road  – a distinctly personal journey that is full of mystery and longing, with the magic of the turf at its epicentre. And there’s usually a McDonalds thrown in as a guilty pleasure.

I gather with my tribe, strangers all, but family all. I leave alone, back on the train, or to the car parked god-knows-where, encouraged or consoled by glances from fellow horns heading my way out with looks of commiseration or glee meant for me to reciprocate. As fans, in our colours, we share this bond, unspoken. So, perhaps this blog is to allow me to reminisce with the wider Watford community, as I can’t do it with my own friends or family, none of whom support Watford, or with the people I hugged at the game, because believe it or not I didn’t take their number.

I was born in 1973, in the hospital next to the football ground, which I’ve always thought such a perfect conveyor belt for new fans. In actual fact, the facility pre-dates the football ground by some considerable time. It was originally Watford Union Workhouse, built between 1836 and 1837. Children born there from 1904 were given 60 Vicarage Road as the address on their Birth Certificates to avoid disadvantaging them later in life. The workhouse then became Shrodell’s Public Assistance Institution before being taken over by the NHS and renamed Watford General in 1948. The football ground close by had been opened on 30th August 1922.

My life in the Watford area didn’t exactly end as I came off the conveyor belt, but it wasn’t to be long lived. Our family, consisting of my parents and an older sister by two years, were living in a cul-de-sac in Carpender’s Park at the time. That’s because my Dad was working for Marconi, and we had moved from our historic patch of deepest Suffolk to facilitate this. I was still in nappies by the time we had been re-absorbed by those south-folk, where I was to be nurtured, in a single-parent household as it turned out, in various locations including Sudbury, Lavenham and Ipswich. In 1975 my Dad’s work had taken him to Toronto, installing radar technology on the newly-constructed CN Tower, from which vantage point he determined to start a new life on the other side of the Atlantic. He lives in Canada to this day, Watford barely a footnote in his personal life story, yet a deeply-embedded, significant one for me.

I grew up in a picturesque Suffolk village, Lavenham, famous for its crooked house, and in recent times as the birthplace (in the film series, at least) of Harry Potter. I was a little Liverpool supporter pre-1982 as they were the best team, and that seemed to be what mattered in the playground. With no-one to instruct me otherwise, I revelled in the shiny red kit and the self-designated association with names that still send shivers down my spine, like Dalglish, Rush and Souness. I even had a little knitted Liverpool player called Kenny, whose studs were glued on and were forever dislodging, not unlike the real things before blades were invented.

But in 1982 something meteoric happened. An upshot team with the best player I had ever seen – move aside Dalglish, here comes Barnsey – gave Liverpool a very close run for their money and ran out runner’s up in the old First Division. This promoted team, with the jewel of John Barnes gleaming in its otherwise robust and no-nonsense crown, was Watford. I don’t know if it was exactly a light-bulb moment, but I remember thinking, hang on, hadn’t I been born in Watford? And aren’t you actually supposed to support the team where you were born?

The switch in my allegiance to Watford was swift and absolute, and there was no looking back. True, I’d only switched loyalties from champions to runners-up in the top division, so not too great a downgrade (if you ignore the fact they were Champions of Europe aswell), but in doing so I had found some credibility to my fanaticism. There was a genuine tug at my roots going on which I found both compelling and fulfilling. I could actually say I belonged to this tribe. No, I actually did belong to this tribe. There it was, on my birth certificate. At 9 years old football was what I lived and breathed for. Watford was the club I decided to worship until my dying day.

I took to becoming a horn as if I had always been one but no-one had ever told me – which is very much like it was. I ditched the iconic pin-striped Crown Paints Liverpool kit for the glorious golden Iveco Watford one, and as a kid with no dad in a Suffolk village did as much as I could to support the hornets – which was, in practical terms anyway, very little.

With my Uncle, in my Nan’s front room, I watched and couldn’t understand how we were beaten in the 1984 FA Cup final, forever cursing Andy Gray for heading the ball out of Sherwood’s hands and spoiling my delusions of team grandeur. But we didn’t really turn up that day. The next time we got a shot at that trophy, in 2019, I was in attendance, and sadly witnessed the ultimate demonstration of what it’s like when your team doesn’t turn up.

I started keeping a scrapbook full of newspaper match reports as we sank into footballing mediocrity. The appointment of Dave Bassett was like hauling up a huge white flag on our top flight ambitions. John Barnes going to Liverpool was a neat little implosion of my footballing karma. Although I still regard him as my favourite Watford player of all time, I can’t quite forgive him for seeing himself as a Liverpool player first and foremost, however stupid and wrong-headed that is.

Not until I moved to Ipswich as an 11 year-old did my Uncle take me to several games at Portman Road, before, as a teenager, I was able to afford going myself. This is where I first saw my beloved Watford, standing in the Churchmans Stand at Portman Road, concentrating on not cheering if my team were to score. How I longed to be in the away end! Whenever we turned up in the county town of Suffolk, we usually played well, and I would leave feeling elated as those around me grumbled their disapproval.

Throughout my teenage years all my friends were Ipswich fans – tractor boys – and so in footballing terms I was a bit of a pariah. Kids who supported the big clubs kind of got away with it. But if you turned your back on the local team for an outfit not demonstrably superior, that was taken as a snub. A shame really, because I have a real soft spot for Ipswich, the first team I ever saw play, and an incredible one in the early eighties. Both clubs had great community standing, with giants of the managerial world at their helms, Bobby Robson and Graham Taylor, future England managers both. But I hadn’t been born on Portman Road had I?

When I left Ipswich, I spent a year abroad in Canada, working and getting to know my Dad, and then went to University in Hull, where I was to meet my future wife. It wasn’t until after University, in the late 90s, that we established ourselves in London as young twenty-somethings. I suddenly had relative proximity, and some cash to enable me to go to Watford and see a game or two. Since then, there has rarely been a season when I’ve not gone to at least a handful of home and away matches, some seasons where I’ve got into double figures of games. But even throughout the bleakest of seasons, and our relegation to the third tier, my commitment has never wavered, and my blood runs yellow to this day, home or very far away.