A History of Watford F.C.'s History
Interest in Watford FC’s history has exploded in the twenty-first Century.
A cornucopia of books, two museum exhibitions, ten volumes of a supporter-produced visual ‘bookazine’, numerous authoritative websites, social media forums and even a fictional podcast – all majoring on the club’s history – have been produced.
The history of the football club has, however, not held this strong an appeal over the vast majority of its existence since 1881. The below is a brief history of the study of Watford’s history:
1902 – The Victoria County History of Hertfordshire, Vol. 1, identifies that ‘[a] club was founded by Mr. H. W. Grover in 1881 called Watford Rovers, which soon became the representative club of West Herts’.
1910 – The Watford Observer Football Handbook includes a feature titled ‘Football in the Eighties’, which incorrectly displays Watford FC’s ‘genealogical’ descent from Hertfordshire Rangers. Future issues of the Handbook would include (not comprehensively-researched) features such as ‘Watford’s fortunes in the Cup’ and ‘Men who have played for Watford since 1900’.
1964 – The West Herts Post’s Oliver Phillips begins researching the history of the football club for knowledge purposes to support his role as Sports Editor.
1969 – By now at the Watford Observer, Phillips begins serialising the history of the club since 1920-21 in the newspaper as the club prepared for its 50th season as a member of the Football League. Phillips recalled in 1991 that the brief was
“to research into a season each week and write 1,200 words on each of the 50 seasons to run in the series in the newspaper which would then be put together in the shape of a book…
1981 – Watford FC’s officially-produced annual handbook begins a serialised history of the club. Confusion about the club’s founding date meant, ironically, that the club missed the opportunity to mark its centenary on its 100th birthday. The first two issues provided a narrative of the first 45 years of the club’s existence, after which the demands of maintaining this format meant a reversion to statistical records only. The series petered out after the fifth issue in 1985/86, partly owing to recency making a historical record less necessary but also in all probability that the history of the club would be written more formally in the near future…
The series, then erroneously considering 1891 as the club’s founding date, broke down the club history as follows:
- 1981/82 Handbook – ‘The formative years’, 1891-1920
- 1982/83 Handbook – ‘The early twenties’, 1920-26
- 1983/84 Handbook – ‘The pre-war statistics’, 1926-27 to 1938-39
- 1984/85 Handbook – ‘The post-war years’, 1946-47 to 1959-60
- 1985/86 Handbook – ‘Into the Seventies’, 1960-61 to 1973-74
1991 – ‘The Official Centenary History of Watford FC, 1881-1891’, written by Oliver Phillips and supported by research by Trefor Jones, is published. With its avant-garde cover designed by Terry Challis, it remains the seminal book about the club’s history and began an era of feverish interest in the topic. By misfortune, the book coincides with a centenary held ten years too late, but one silver lining is that the most successful era in the club’s history – the mid-1980s – is therefore included.
1996 – Researcher and statistician, Trefor Jones, publishes ‘The Watford Football Club Illustrated Who’s Who’.
1998 – Trefor Jones publishes ‘Watford Season by Season’. Jones built on the research from this and his previous book and would launch the ‘Watford FC Archive’ website, a comprehensive statistical record of the club’s history.
2001 – Oli Phillips writes ‘The Golden Boys – A Study of Watford’s Cult Heroes’, incorporating in-depth biographies of 34 of the most important players in the club’s history.
2002 – Nick Davidson’s ‘Team Shirts to Ticket Stubs – A Visual History of Watford Football Club 1977-2002’ is published. Its influence was significant, with the future ‘Watford Treasury’ series bearing the hallmarks of high-quality photography, images of memorabilia and prose.
2002 and 2003 – The Watford Museum holds two exhibitions, curated by Sarah Priestley, covering a similar remit to Davidson’s book, exhibiting items and memorabilia from the era lent by supporters.
2010 – Lionel Birnie publishes ‘Enjoy the Game – Watford Football Club – The Story of the Eighties’.
2012 – The first volume of ‘Tales from the Vicarage, complied by Lionel Birnie, is published. The series comprises collections of writing about Watford FC, including past seasons.
2015 – Olly Wicken produces the first ‘Hornet Heaven‘ podcast, featuring a Watford FC-themed afterlife where deceased supporters can attend any match in the club’s history.
2015 – Robert Johnson launches ‘Old Watford’ – a ‘day by day scrapbook style history of Watford Football Club matches told through programmes, newspapers, books, fanzines, videos and weblinks’.
2017 – The Facebook group ‘Hornet Programmes and Memorabilia’ is launched by Colin Payne. Later renamed ‘Hornet History and Old Stuff’, it will gain more than 2,000 members and will bring together a group of likeminded individuals who would form the ‘Watford Treasury’ project.
2017 – Graham Taylor’s autobiography is published in November 2017. He had been working on the book over the two years before his untimely death in January 2017.
2018 – ‘The Watford Treasury’ heritage project is formed and its first ‘bookazine’ style publication covering the history and visual identity of the club is printed. As of 2023, it has had ten volumes and is still going strong.
2019 – Trefor Jones sadly passes away. The ‘Watford FC Archive’ website is subsequently inherited by Matt Rowson, Steve Brown and Ian Grant, who undertook a project to adapt the site to aid the process of updating data and in searching and accessing historical information.
2020 – with the country locked-down owing to the Covid pandemic, Colin Payne launches ‘Home Tied’, a fanzine-format publication which serves as something of a ‘Watford Treasury-lite’ with articles contributed by the Treasury team and others. It will evolve into an ongoing publication, ‘YBR!’.
2022 – Two members of the Treasury project, Neil Dunham and Tom Brodrick, launch ‘Watford Gold’ with the support of Watford Football Club.
2022 – The Watford Museum hosts the ‘100 Years at the Vic’ exhibition, co-curated by Sarah Priestley, Neil Dunham and Tom Brodrick.
2022 – ‘100 Years at Vicarage Road’, written by Geoff Wicken, is published. It forms the definitive history of Watford FC’s Stadium, which opened in August 1922, at its centenary.
2023 – Oliver Phillips sadly passes away. The football club, Watford Observer and many other outlets pay tribute to a monumental figure in the local press and indeed at the football club from the 1960s onwards. It is difficult to imagine the history and heritage scene associated with Watford FC being what it is today without the work which Oli pioneered.
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