Watford Museum presents...

Follow the Yellow Brick Road: Memories:

The First Time

By Paul Goss

Cover, featuring Ross Jenkins in action against Everton, of the programme for the game against Sunderland on 25th September 1982

Team details from the back cover of the programme

Do you remember the first time you saw Watford play? Was it memorable? I hope that it was memorable for the right reasons as my first visit to Vicarage Road was.

It was the early eighties and the football landscape was considerably different to that of today. Crowd violence and racism at football matches were a lot more common and unfortunately that was enough for my mother to stop me from going to football.

As you can imagine for a teenager who couldn't go this was quite an inconvenience especially as 'all' my mates went. Watford had just been promoted to Division 1, the top league in those days, and I couldn't wait. So I made the decision that I was going and I 'forgot' to mention it to her.

Match day arrived and it was off to the ground arriving in plenty of time for the game. The stunning win was amazing and had my friends saying "You'll have to come every week". Watford 8 Sunderland 0 wow, watching football on TV was OK but going to the game was much better. I wasn't naive enough to believe that it was going to be like this every week but I was hooked and having found a suitable adult to go with this allowed my mother to be convinced that I would be OK.

This win went into Watford folk lore and is right up there with league games like the 4-3 comeback against Bolton (doh - I missed that) and the excellent day out at Anfield in the Premiership. Fond memories and I couldn't have picked a better first time to see the Golden Boys.

Added to the exhibition on 20/10/2004