Criminals and Cheats

Watford v Manchester United

Saturday 26^th August

The logistics of my travel: about 4 minutes to Euston on the bike. 20 mins on the train and 15 mins cycle to Kerry’s. Have a small bottle of beer and chew the fat with sis and Phil. Kerry offers to cook for me after the game and I take her up on it. I confirm Joss’ favourite team is Watford (conversion complete?) and talk down our chances. After two games, Man U’ve scored 8 and let in 1. We’ve got 1 point. We leave at 2, and on the walk to the ground, which takes about 30 mins with Joss, I stop to use the cashpoint at the shops on Tolpits Lane. Waiting behind a guy on his mobile, I notice Joss’ dad coming over. I guess that he’s seen us through his window and decided to come out. ‘Doggy’ and I shake hands and exchange pleasantries, it’s the first time I’ve seen him since before the trial, which I didn’t go to. He was at the funeral in May though, of course.

The cashpoint is the only one on the Hollywell, as far as I know. Each of the people who live in this less-than-wealthy area are charged for the privilege of accessing their own money, another “screw you” to us from the type who balk at the interest rates they charge on their own credit cards or laugh at us for buying the “crap” jewellery they flog in their shops. I’m slightly annoyed with myself for not using a cashpoint earlier, but that feeling is subordinated to the contempt I feel for those behind my ‘stolen’ £1.50.

The three of us walk together for a couple of minutes until we are opposite the local, the Highwayman. After we take our leave he calls me back so Joss can’t hear what he wants to say about the trial. I tell him Jun said he’d done a good job. He’s smiling as he crosses the road and goes into the pub. Joss and I walk on, turning right into Hagden Lane, chatting football again. Joss says he’ll be happy if we score. I agree. The queue at the turnstiles is as bad at this time as ever but we get in about half two and see the teams warming up. We’ve never done that before: always last-minute it.

Back in May 1985, I saw Watford beat United 5-1 at the Vic at the end of the season on the way to a mid-table finish. Back in those days, money hadn’t clicked that sport was one of the new religions and Watford had climbed from the old Fourth Division to the First between 1977/78 and 1982/83 under Graham Taylor. The following season we made the FA Cup Final. Jun ribs me about living in the past and I am aware that the ‘Nostalgia is dangerous’ sloganned T-shirt I wore as a message to England fans in Japan should really be a lesson for me to learn. After all, the game’s saturated now and it can never go back.

There are many consequences of billions of pounds in football: both positive and negative. The effect on the players as people, however, probably comes under the latter. Chants like Curly’s “Rohypnol Ronaldo” are a reminder that young millionaires expect to get what they want. (OK, it is also largely due to the fact that we haven’t played Man U much since 1985, and certainly not since those rape accusations, wholly unfounded in every single unproven case involving the spoilt young rich undereducated overpaid macho footballers, no doubt).

Ahem.

Curly was also on to Rio Ferdinand’s missed drugs test and subsequent ban. All it needs is a new team to come up every season with fans who haven’t played Man U since before 2003 and he’ll never be allowed to forget it (which he was at the time…). Now, I don’t know about Rio, but the fact is that performance-enhancing drugs are used in sports and it would be exceptionally naïve to think that English football was somehow exempt. Top Premiership players might play 50 or 60 games in a season and there are ways of assisting them to do that. Cheating exists in a number of guises in society and in the game, too. ‘Professional fouls’ and ‘diving’ are two of the most obvious to the fan, but the money and influence that has led to Juventus’ demotion in Italy, and the steroids flowing through the veins of English players are less tangible to a crowd of 20,000. That does not make them less real. Indeed, they have a far greater corrosive effect on the sport.

Curly, for his part, seemed to think the whole affair made Rio a cokehead. From there, it only needed the connection to the Pinocchio nose of the goalie, Van der Saar, and the permutations multiplied enough for us to live up to Betty’s call to make the Vic a “hostile” environment. Curly’s liberal use of the word ‘cunt’ at the end of many of the insults helps form the environment at the front within shouting distance of their strikers in the first half and their goalie and defenders in the second. “Marlon says you’re a cunt” is one of his faves.

But it wasn’t us, it was the Golden Boys. They went one down early and a second looked possible but Ashley Young went past the scorer of their goal, Silvestre, on the right and crossed for Damien Francis to knock it in for his second of the season. Richard Lee made an excellent save low to his left to keep us in it but in the second half Darius Henderson gets some weird connection on what should have been a tap in and the ball crosses the goal in front of us past two other Watford players. A minute and a half later, a bad back pass, Giggs is in and they are 2-1 up. We are back on our feet: Yellow Army! Yellow Army! The game played out that way, though, and they are 3 wins out of 3 and top. We are slipping down but we’ve played 3 of last season’s top-ten teams and we’ve played well enough. Not beautiful, but pacy and committed. I think our concentration in defence straight after good chances is a problem.

We let the crush go this time and walked back out the further exit in order to go into the Watford Shop. I was on a mug thing, even bought one I didn’t really like. I got Joss a football that needs some air but he didn’t seem to want a shirt (maybe he was just being polite). Then we walked back and talked about the game and tried to guess where we’d be in the table. Joss is still in his summer holidays before he starts senior school in early Sep. Kerry lives in a cul-de-sac and Joss knows all the kids around and spends most days playing outside with his friends. I’m getting nostalgic.

After pasta, salad and garlic bread and a couple more beers, I cycle back to the station and get on a train for Euston. Sit next to a guy who tells me he lives in London but works in a barber’s in Watford and ‘cuts’ a couple of the Watford players. We talk a bit about our chances this year and I tell him with the authority of someone who has seen 2 games (talking to someone who hasn’t seen any) that we can stay up. Fake it till you make it...