As we are on a losing streak and with the book 100 greatest watford wins at print , what would you say is watfords greatest win ? Beating Southampton 7.1 at home the uefa cup game with Kaiserslautern ?
I find it very hard to decide - need to consider the context of each match. The Southampton victory, along with the likes of Man U in 1969 & 1978, Liverpool in 1970, were all David vs Goliath type results and were all exhilerating, never to be forgotten, newsworthy etc. But for me, probably our best ever result was the 8-0 against Sunderland. It made the football world sit up and take notice, really announced our arrival as a top flight club. Just a pity we couldn't sustain it for longer though.
v Plymouth, in the FA Cup semi final, reaching the pinnacle of the competition for the first time. v Tottenham, our first visit in the old div 1, disrespectful tackling indeed! v Wrexham to assure promotion to div 1 v Leeds at the Millenium Stadium.
This is not a win but it should have been. Heiðar Helguson's second debut match against Leicester City. Two goals down and then one up and finally a draw. Lots of different emotions in one game. And the last game of the 1982-83 season. Beating Liverpool to be second best in the country with goals from Luther Blissett and Martin Patching after his bad injury. Perhaps Notts County's win over Manchester United on the same day should count as a famous victory for Watford as well.
October 23rd 1993 (my sister's 18th birthday) and a rare time I see a game during term time while I'm at Uni. Home to Bolton and 3-0 down with 20 mins to go and win 4-3 with a hat-trick from Gary Porter (the third a pen) and a goal from Ken Charlery. Also, 2 games in a row were the 5-1 wins against Spurs and Man U (one away) at the end of the 84-85 season.
Many matches stand out. 1970 - Liverpool 1978 - Man. Utd Wins against Sunderland 8-0 and Southampton 7-1 Or how about 1-0 against Plymouth because it happened 4 times in vital matches ! Cup Semi, Cup quarter final, decisive match in promotion year 1969, and decisive match in battle against relegation 2 years ago- they must be sick of us !
All the obvious matches are here, Southampton, Sunderland, Kaiserslautern, L**ton away, Old Trafford, come-back against Bolton etc. But I'm going to put forward a slightly left-field suggestion. Sheffield Wednesday away in 1979 was a game we could have lost, but in the end won and it set us up for promotion to Div. 2. If we had lost that game, we would almost certainly have stayed in Division 3 for the following season. Div. 3 was a notoriously difficult league to get out of - we had only done it once before in 1969 - and our momentum that season was slowing almost to a dead stop. GT himself admitted that he had had to drag the team virtually personally over the promotion line. Maybe if we hadn't gone up that year, we might have struggled to go up the following year and GT may have become disillusioned with Watford (perish the thought) - after all he had only been with the club for 2 years then and wasn't yet the legend that he became. SEJ may have realised that promotion to Div. 1 was beyond the team and sold the club much earlier than he did. So, as a result - no promotion from Div. 3, no Southampton League Cup tie, no promotion to Div. 1, no 8-0 win, no second place in Div. 1, no European adventure, no Cup Final, no John Barnes, no return of GT, no back-to-back promotions up to the Premiership, no win at Anfield......... On the other hand, maybe no Harry Bassett, no Jack Petchey, no Gianluca Vialli and probably no Aidy Boothroyd. It all came down to 2 late goals at Hillsborough in front of a baying, hateful crowd of Yorkies..... You decide!
I believe the historians call it "Counterfactual History". Maybe we need a De Lorean at 88mph, some plutonium & a flux capacitor to go back to Spring 1979 and put Ian Bolton off taking his penalty, to see what would have happened if he'd missed....... On the other hand I had quite enough seeing Watford meander about the lower Divisions in the 50's and 60's, without seeing them go down to Div. 4 in 1982, lose their place in the League in 1996 and having to join the Blue Square Premier League (or whatever it was called then), go bust, have to sell Vicarage Road to survive, have to ground-share with St Albans City and change their colours back to royal blue & white. But the FA Trophy win in 1999 at Wembley was great - especially Wright's overhead kick for the first goal.
I'm slightly missing the point of this because there have been better games, but I did miss the 80's so I've got half an excuse. Watching us lift a trophy at the Old Wembley under our greatest ever manager will take some beating.
Better games probably, but the question was "watfords greatest ever win"? Does "great" mean full of flowing football, loads of goals, financial rewards at stake, raw emotion such as winning at Oxford to stay up on the last day of the season......?
I guess it doesn't have much to do with the flowing football or the size of the win but rather the game which sticks in your memory the best. This could have to do with many personal factors like for example your age at the time. At 13 - 16 everything stands out in the memory as something special, whether it's to do with the music of the period or the football. For this reason I would choose the decisive match of our first ever promotion to the old Div. 2 under Ken Furphy, a 1-0 victory over Plymouth. There have obviously been far greater wins than this one, but, at that time it was the way into the promised land to a higher level than we had ever been before. It's also the only time I've ever been on the Vicarage Road pitch after a match.
For me the greatest match was the first one I saw. I don't remember who we played or if we won, though we probably did. What made it great was that I was hooked - forevr to be a hornet.
Huddersfield, '74 I think. 2-0, Mercer brace, two sent off. Cracking. Mike Keen sacked on the Monday.
Mike Keen was sacked just before the game I believe, which is why the players were so motivated (overmotivated?) Geidmintis was one of the players sent off (whole-hearted player) but I can't remember the other - Mayes perhaps? And it was 1976 - SEJ sacked him finally. He would have sacked him earlier but we won an F A Cup game at Gillingham which kept Keen in the job for another 6 months
