Oh what an atmosphere

Watford v Wolverhampton Wanderers

Saturday 2^nd February

I met Jo at Euston about 1:45 and we had the first pint in the Britannia overlooking the concourse and the dirt and dust of the kiosk roofs waiting for Ali. It was to be Jo’s first ever game and Ali’s first in England: they were excited. I was just hoping for better than last week. They marvelled over the speed of the journey (a first on Silverlink, I’m sure) and we were supping in Watford’s Moon Under Water by three. A drink in the Three Bells and then past St Mary’s to the Oddfellows. I was giving a running commentary all the while (I used to live there, this is new, used to work here) and they listened with good grace.

I chatted with some no-colours Wolves fan in the second pub and later we were surrounded by them in the place I used to be a pot-boy. Ali told me there’d been something in the newspaper about Maradonna retracting something to do with “the hand of God” and admitting that it was his hand. Sitting next to a table of Wolves fans I had to tell the story of the cheating Argie (I managed to get in a good bit about John Barnes’ crosses, for good measure) to someone who’d never heard it before.

Joss went in before us but after we had taken some pics outside the ground we joined him and then went to sit with a better view where the girls had tickets. There was bugger all atmosphere around though, despite Steve Kabba getting his first Watford goal within a minute. The woman next to me complained when Jo leant back to say something and so we returned to the “front row” at half-time (after a beer).

That turned out to be the best move of the day. It was a party down the front and I led my fair share of chants, the newbies joining in too. There seems to be a new bunch down there (we’ve been elsewhere for three games and the father of the father-and-son behind us that I half-chat to had mentioned they thought we’d given up) but there were some of the usual faces too.

Second half saw two Tommy Smith goals in two minutes, though I thought until Sunday that Nathan Ellington had scored the first, and we spent the rest of the game on our feet as I became ever more hoarse. Favourite new song was for Kabba: "He used to be shite, but now he's all right..."

We walked Joss down to meet Kerry and Phil and then headed back to pubs in town, managing a crawl down to the pond end. Last was O’Neils, where some guy tried I talked to tried to make a racist joke at Malky Mckay’s expense, clearly unaware that he was white. After that, it was non-stop Watford cleavage all night. Jo and Ali attempted to make football conversation but were non-plussed that nobody except us cared. After hanging around to see whether the local constabulary had much to do, we caught a late train back, and I was at home about one, whispering.