Watford open their hearts to NHS heroes
ALMOST two months have passed since Vicarage road reverberated in joyous celebration as Liverpool were toppled for the first time in the league this season and Watford revived their chances of avoiding the drop.
Not a ball has been kicked since at this 98-year-old venue and the ground staff have seized the chance to bring forward plans to repair the pitch.
Yet the place is abuzz with its new community role as doctors and nurses, hospital porters and other NhS workers file through corridors and spill into the stands.
Some are here for food and drink, others are searching for sleep or counselling. Others are hurrying to another key meeting in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
Vicarage road is no longer the scene of a fight against relegation. It has effectively become an extension of its neighbour, Watford General hospital.
It started as a simple request from the West herts hospitals NhS Trust for a meeting space from which to plan their response to the crisis and has developed into a partnership.
Watford have thrown open the doors of the stadium for 24 hours a day. More than 1,000 NhS staff have been fed with free meals served up by the club’s catering staff. More than 10,000 pairs of scrubs have been washed at the club’s on-site laundry.
More than 200 hours of NhS meetings have taken place inside the stadium.
The Sir elton John Suite has been converted into a counselling room and 18 executive boxes in the Graham Taylor Stand, including the double box belonging to captain Troy Deeney ( below), have been transformed into bedrooms for NhS staff.
Sir elton, the club’s former chairman and honorary life president, has been on the phone from Los Angeles to applaud the partnership.
‘I speak to elton regularly and he could not be more proud of the club,’ said chairman and chief executive Scott Duxbury. ‘he is aware of everything we are doing.
‘It is very important for him to see that the values he put in place with Graham Taylor remain at the heart of the club.
‘It’s often said we were the first family club. Words are easy, actions are harder. Our staff came to me and said we had to do something. This is not staged. This is something our staff have worked really hard to implement. It is pure.
‘It’s a good feeling. It is really quite humbling. It reassures me that everything we stand for as a club is being demonstrated. This is nothing to do with football or results.’ Sixty of Watford’s fulltime staff — together with an army of up to 300 volunteers assembled via the club’s community network — have turned the focus from football to caring each day for the needs of the NhS workers. They are still being paid in full by the club, who are not using the Government’s furlough scheme.
‘ The response has been remarkable and we are deeply grateful,’ said Christine Allen, chief executive of the West herts hospitals Trust.
‘There’s something special happening here.’
More than anything else, for the frontline nursing staff it has provided an invaluable chance to escape the overwhelming strain of life inside the wards.
‘It’s been fantastic to have this facility,’ said orthopaedic surgical care practitioner Theresa Maunganidze.
‘having the chance to come out for fresh air, to come to a place that is not a hospital, to chat and laugh and share experiences and reflect on the day, it’s been amazing.
‘ We’re seeing difficult situations, the type of which we’ve never experienced before. everybody is under stress. It is intense and draining.’
Watford have opened a hospital call centre inside their media centre and will open an area for maternity out-patients on the opposite side of the stadium.
With the club engulfed by their commitment to helping the NhS, there is little appetite to rush back to Premier League action. ‘I feel uncomfortable talking about football when we’re in this position,’ said Duxbury. ‘There is a pandemic, there are immediate needs.
‘The running of the football club is secondary to what we are doing with the hospital.
‘A greater good needs to be addressed. We are facing a war and it is a war we need to win.’