The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
Elton, Graham and a 1970s dream team
John Preston, abetted by a certain other John, delves into the famous renaissance of Watford FC
WATFORD FOREVER by John Preston and Elton John 304pp, Viking, T £18.99 (0844 871 1514), RRP£22, ebook £9.99
At the heart of John Preston’s book about one of English football’s most unlikely rags-to-riches stories is the working friendship between the manager Graham Taylor and chairman-cum-rock-star Elton John, a Watford fan since being taken to Vicarage Road as a boy. Seemingly as unalike as might be possible for two members of the same species,
Taylor was a no-nonsense, Vera Lynn-worshipping disciplinarian, while John was flamboyant and, at times, in free fall.
Nonetheless, their time at the helm in the late 1970s and early 1980s elevated unfashionable Watford, in less than a decade, from life in the footballing basement to an extraordinary series of promotions and an FA Cup final in 1984.
Preston (author of The Dig and A Very English Scandal) paints an endearing picture of the club as it was in 1976. Watford’s fans, back then, were “far too dispirited” to jump on the hooliganism bandwagon wreaking havoc in the game; they were more worried about navigating the greyhound track that operated at the ground or picking the abundant blackberries found on site. When Taylor took over, after a stint at Lincoln FC, he was faced with a scouting network consisting of one 95-year-old man and had to visit local pub landlords to ask them to make his players lay off the ale the night before a game.
The key to the relationship between Taylor and John seems, in Preston’s telling, to have been mutual respect. John – barring the odd mishap, quickly rebuked – knew to stay in his lane, and had a genuine love and knowledge of football across all four divisions. Taylor was a pragmatist, at least tactically: there was a blend of discipline and tiddlywinks behind his initial attempts to win hearts and minds. But he was psychologically astute, asserting dominance by forcing players to sit on a low stool for their dressing-downs, drawing on his own formative experience of being forced to milk a pig; at the same time, he introduced a family stand and encouraged women to come in numbers to join the party brewing at Vicarage Road.
While Watford’s long-ball tactics didn’t impress purists, they achieved incredible success, with the highlights being a number of giant-killing exploits and that famous FA Cup run. John proved a supportive backer, though (sensibly) not a limitless one, and Taylor proved a rare no-man in the star’s widely enabled life of excess.
As for the collaboration between Preston and John, the latter tends to be portrayed as a humble man of the people, without airs or graces, and while that isn’t untrue, it’s conveniently favourable. Either way, though, Watford Forever teems with striking images, from Big Ron Atkinson as “a cement mixer on legs” to Michael Barrymore’s regrettable blackface impression of John Barnes. From first to last, this is an ever-entertaining telling of a remarkable sporting fairy tale.