Saturday 9th September
Watford won more points on their travels than at the Vic last season on the way to the play-offs. They need to reproduce that away form if they are to stay up this year but at the moment we have symmetry: one draw and one defeat both at home and on the road.
Sunday 10th September
I wrote those two sentences yesterday and turned off the computer to finish packing my squash gear before meeting John (who I’d already told on the phone that we’d drawn) for our second ever game. As I did, Phil Thompson, who was watching the game for Sky Sports News, said that there’d been a 95th minute penalty awarded at the Reebok. No? It was to Bolton. Noooooo. They converted it on a day when the Premiership saw 4 saved penalties. Noooooooooooo. Symmetry deserted me. Watford lost 1-0 and with one point from four games are now propping up the division like a corpse in a flyover.
Malky Mckay hit the crossbar in the game that was his Premiership debut after being promoted twice (Norwich 2004, West Ham 2005) and subsequently sold before the new season began. Francis hit the post and Young also the crossbar to leave their manager, Sam Allardyce (whose name, like the racist Ron Atkinson’s, is usually prefixed with ‘big’), saying they were fortunate and didn’t deserve the three points. In the Observer Matt Rowson, who was co-founder of the excellent Blind, Stupid and Desperate on-line Watford fanzine which changed its status to ‘archive’ with its closure last month, “wonders if we have the quality to stay up”.
What the fuck is fate? Am I supposed to have tempted it by writing about symmetry before the whistle blew? Is fate not something that is certain to occur? If so, how can such inevitability be tempted? What the fuck is fate? Is my team a passive object of the workings of something preordained by some power that we do not easily perceive? Or are those wearing the golden shirts able to influence this force: to choose their own destiny?
Fuck fate. Unsurprisingly, I don’t believe in any form of preordination. I am an atheist, not persuaded by mystical limits on my own agency. Destiny, however, as I understand it, is something you can shape. With destiny, you are the active subject. If those heads go down, destiny becomes fatal, but it is never fate. With that in mind, I decided to send an email to yourvoice@watfordfc.com.
hi, i am the recipient of Aidy's emails every week and just thought i'd return the favour. I know he's widely-read and thought i'd send him this poem, which has something of the indomitable spirit i think he is trying to inspire in the Golden Boys.
Invictus (unconquered) by W.E. Henley:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
The Golden Boys can do it. Come on!
After all, I don’t want this unrequited love to be wholly one-sided. For my part, I will court (not stalk).
With Aston Villa home next, Wigan away after that and then Fulham home again, our first three points cannot be so far away. Fuck fate. I will tempt it again, though the notion of doing so is philosophically ridiculous. If they believe in themselves, Watford will stay up.
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