Elton John got clattered in training by Tim Sherwood!
Watford legend Blissett on blood, sweat and tiaras...
Jamie Redknapp cleaned my boots . . . he was rubbish
FROM dog tracks and Elton John in Watford to dog mess and Harry Redknapp in Bournemouth, Luther Blissett is remembering what made two of his former clubs so special. Suddenly, a knee comes to mind and then a pool of blood and an unusual gift.
It is May 1985 and Watford are battering Manchester United 5-1 when Blissett picks up the tale.
‘I’ve scored one of the goals and it’s going brilliantly,’ he says. ‘Then I take a knee from Gary Bailey, the United keeper. It hits me hard on the head and I’m lying there, face down, bleeding. Fractured skull.
‘It was the last home game of the season and I’m taken off to the hospital around the corner from Vicarage Road. I can’t quite remember how long I was in there, but when I came out, I saw the groundsman Les Simmons. A good man, Les, had been there forever before he died six years ago. He makes this presentation to me and it’s this piece of turf stained with my blood.
‘He’s gone out there straight after the game and cut it out for me. What else could I say except thank you?
‘But that is how the place was — that togetherness between all of us, from the players to Les to Graham Taylor to Elton, is what made the club what it was.’
Watford were the Leicester of their time, except Taylor’s brilliant side started their run from back in the old Fourth Division in 1978 and finished second in their first season in the top flight five years on.
Blissett did then what Jamie Vardy is doing now, scoring 27 goals in his first top-flight season and adding a hat-trick on his full debut for England. For Leicester’s Thai ownership and Claudio Ranieri, read Elton John and Taylor, the star and his unlikely friend who rocked English football.
‘Vardy wasn’t born back then,’ Blissett says. ‘ Goodness me, it seems a while ago now. That was an adventure.’
Blissett is 58 these days and a part-time racing driver, not to mention an ambassador for Watford and a willing fundraiser for Bournemouth and their charities whenever they come calling. He split more than 200 league goals between those two clubs who meet in the Premier League on Saturday, which is why Blissett is navigating his memories. The road leads to Elton John.
‘He took over as chairman some time when I was coming through the youth team,’ Blissett says. ‘We would call him “Mr Chairman” and kept it formal, even though we’d all see him on Top of the Pops. ‘The best time I had with him was when we played in the Great Wall of China Cup in the late Eighties.
‘ We went over for two weeks and Graham didn’t come out for that one. We were training one day and Elton decided he wanted to play in our game of five-a-side.
‘The problem is we trained like we played — if there was a ball to be won, you won it.
‘We had a young lad of 18 making his first trip with the first team — he was desperate to make an impression. Tim Sherwood, as it happens. I remember someone passing a ball to Elton and Tim sets off, full speed. You’re thinking, “Oh no. Tim, slow down. Tim?”
‘This is all happening in slow motion to the rest of us watching. I will never forget seeing Tim clatter Elton John and Elton flying up in the air. It took an age for him to come down. We are all stood there open-mouthed. Elton, to his credit, gets up, smiles at Tim and on he goes goes, having the time of his life.’life ’
They all were. ‘I sometimes think what Graham Taylor did with that team has been diluted with time,’ Blissett says. ‘He was a wonderful manager and is a great man. Him and Elton — you wouldn’t think to put them together but it worked brilliantly. They were so close.’
Taylor had arrived in 1977, when Blissett had barely glimpsed the first team. ‘He just changed everything — it was his way or you were out of there,’ Blissett says.
‘I remember a few of the senior pros grumbling and they were soon gone, which opened the way for me to get in the team.
‘ What a team he built. Nigel Callaghan with those crosses from the wing. John Barnes ( with Blissett, left) on the other side. Me and Ross Jenkins got some great service up front. All we wanted to do was win — no grumbling, just get on with what we had, which wasn’t always very much.
‘We had a dog track around the pitch at Vicarage Road and we were training in Cassiobury Park. We’d jog over with some balls, get our boots on and use some cones to scrape up the dog mess. Did that at Bournemouth as well. Then we’d run back at the end. We built up so much team spirit doing that and team spirit wins you games.’
Once the winning started, gained rapid momentum.
In 1979, while still in the third tier, Watford reached the League Cup semi-finals.
‘We used to play Elton’s music on the bus during that cup run,’ Blissett says. ‘ We always had the track Bennie and the Jets playing as we arrived and we did it every game. The only game we didn’t — and I admit this made me wonder for a while — we lost. It was the sem semi-final first leg at Nottingham Forest and for some reason noone could find the tape.’
Blissett spent 13 seasons as a player at Watford, split across t three spells — punctuated by a an underwhelming season at A AC Milan — and three excellent s seasons at Bournemouth, where h he scored 56 goals in 121 games u under Harry Redknapp.
‘Harry is a chef,’ Blissett says. ‘H ‘He is excellent at finding the ri right ingredients. He gets players w who understand the game and have a good influence; then he is theh motivator from there on. He b brought me in when I was 30 and he got me going again — I loved it it.
‘ ‘It was another team of men, lots of personality, no sulking like you se seem to have today a bit. We wo would be in the dressing room if it wa wasn’t going well and Harry would ba bang a table and you’d get covered in tea from time to time.
‘H ‘He was a master at getting extra out of people. Like at Watford, we would be training in parks, over at West Parley, and cleaning up dog mess before getting going. It was old school. We loved it. I remember Jamie, Harry’s son, used to clean my boots. He was rubbish — I usually ended doing them myself.’
Blissett is still in touch with Redknapp Snr for occasional games of golf. ‘ He’s a cheating b*****d,’ Blissett says. Redknapp, like Taylor, would turn to Blissett to coach his strikers. A career in management never happened, despite Blissett’s ambitions, but now he is ‘largely past that frustration’.
Instead, he races cars and will soon start mentoring young footballers. ‘Football is what I love,’ he says. ‘Look at what Leicester and Vardy are doing. That’s special.’
Blissett knows better than most how special it is.
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