Full MOTD highlights. Well worth 20 mins of your time. What an entertaining game played on a mudbath. What a great team this line up was becoming. Full of goals. Wasn't at the game but I was listening to the game in my Sheffield Hall of Residence with my next door Notts supporting mate. His ecstasy over an early 2-goal lead turned to howls of doom and gloom by half time. Since signing Mo Johnston, Watford were on a roll, and he, Reilly, Barnes, and Callaghan formed a deadly foursome. Despite going 2 down early doors I was confident we would prevail as was we quite regularly well and trully turned over the opposition. Sneaky 1-nils were not GTs style. Watched the MOTD highlights in the big BBC1 TV room in the evening after a few beers in the Hall bar. Cally's 2nd goal drew a round of applause from most who were watching. I was the only Watford fan in the room but felt very proud.
Fascinating, thanks for posting that. A few observations and titbits of information I gathered about the match: - Looks like the result didn't flatter us, after going 2-0 down including giving away a soft penalty, we were all over them for the most part. - Hard to believe George Reilly was only 26, he looks much older with that tache and already receding hairline. When exactly did he play for us? - The pitch looks awful, especially in the penalty areas. Amusing to see Callaghan give himself a mud bath after his falling in disappointment at his miss. I suppose this was pretty common back then, especially at the smaller clubs? Going into the match, Watford were 13th, Notts County were 20th and already in deep relegation trouble. At the end of the match Watford were 11th and Notts County were 21st, which is where the two clubs finished. Notts went into freefall and were relegated again the following season, though they paid a brief visit back to the top flight under Warnock in 1991. The tables before and after the game and at the end of the season https://www.11v11.com/league-tables/league-division-one/10-february-1984/ https://www.11v11.com/league-tables/league-division-one/11-february-1984/ https://www.11v11.com/league-tables/league-division-one/1984/ The weather in Nottingham that day was 9.1 C max, misty with a light breeze. It'd been raining every day for nearly a fortnight not long before the game, so no wonder the pitch was in a fair state.
Reilly played for us for two seasons 83-85 and was the replacement for Ross Jenkins at number 9. All pitches were like that back then after a few months of the season - nothing to do with it being a smaller club.
Reilly impressed GT while paying for Cambridge as a makeshift centre back when they had injury problems, including shutting us out when they played against us. He also formed one of those phonetic scoring partnerships with Alan Biley there, Biley and Reilly. Biley also had one of the most iconic mullets that I've ever seen. George was alot more skilfull than he was given credit for. He was an excellent target man, really good at linking the play. There was talk of him being called up for Scotland (when they were half decent) when he was playing for us. I always thought he was our best player during the 84 FA Cup Final, one of the few players not to freeze on the day. Ironically, his heading technique wasn't as good as it could be as he had a tendency of just letting the ball hit his head, rather than really putting his neck muscles to it, like Luther did, and generating extra power. Unfortunately, Reilly liked to drink alot, and was responsible for leading players such as Nigel Callaghan astray. GT could tolerate indiscretions, but once you crossed a line and there was no coming back, then you were moved on for the good of the club. Reilly was sold to Newcastle.
Yep, however, some pitches did have a reputation as being particularly bad. For some reason, most of the London club pitches were pretty bad, like QPR. One of the excuses they gave for eventually installing that cheating, plastic monstrosity. Remember, most pitches would also have reserve team and FA Youth games played on them too. Also, cup competitions could have unlimited replays and this would have an effect on the pitches in the latter half of the season when they were becoming worse for wear.
You’re right that there were matches played on stadium pitches in the past, but the main reason for the huge increase in quality we see now is improved pitch maintenance techniques and, of course, the amount of money spent on them (getting the grass to grow in the winter etc.).
Thanks for posting Reg. What a brilliant, exciting team we had back then. We were coming to within a year or so of the end of the greatest, most exciting time in our clubs history (in my opinion). From near the bottom of the lowest tier, to 2nd in the top tier in only 6 years or so. Absolutely amazing, and I blame this era for my belief that anything is possible in football, and why I get frustrated by all the negativity and lack of belief. I remember Elton getting laughed at when he said, as a guest on an evening chat show on TV around 1977, we would be a top tier club within a decade.
I was at the game...it was a real joy going to away games following that side...amazing away wins interspersed with some stuffings when we weren't quite 'on it'. But never boring...and as for getting back to your car safely sometimes!
I’m surprised he was working as a bricklayer nearly 20 years on - did he not earn that much at Watford despite them being a top flight club? Or did he squander a lot of his earnings on booze and other indulgences, or did he actually want to work as a bricklayer?
Footballers didn't earn life-changing money back then and Watford were certainly not among the highest payers in the top division. Most of the cup final team went into other jobs after retiring simply because they had to in those days. When I went to meet him, Steve Sherwood was running his own financial advice company in Grimsby (and still does, I think). Steve Terry worked for the Press Association for many years. Wilf Rostron ran a furniture importing business up in the north east. Les Taylor worked as a hospital porter in Oxford before getting back into football with Oxford United. Nigel Callaghan has been a DJ for many years. George Reilly was a bricklayer, as you say.
Thanks for that reg, most enjoyable nostalgia. Nigel Callaghan, what a skilful and underrated player he was. In a big six team he would have been an England star imo. Wilf Rostron , what an excellent player for Watford, winger turned left back, player of the season and so cruelly prevented from playing in the 84 cup final by dodgy ref. What could have been.. Pandemics affected everyone even in those days - sidelined by chicken pox.. Those disgusting fences caging in supporters, which became death traps. Poor Notts County, oldest club in the Football League with a proud history... how they have fallen. Those shorts - I used to think the big baggies they wear today were so Dixie Dean old fashioned, and never thought I’d see shaved hairstyles which were so 40’s-50’s. Shows how fashions revolve. (Although I always thought my special flower power era flares would come back into fashion and yea, they did, but hell, could I get them on ) Football back in the day in all its excitement for the man in the terraces with GT’s philosophy.. .. and despite the undoubted skill and fitness levels in today’s game, some of it’s negatives today are football being more like chess, back and sideways to find a weak spot and opening, and fast becoming a non contact sport, and only to view in person by those who can afford a wad...
Footballers have always been well-payed compared with the ‘man in the street’, even in the maximum wage days. Back then they would have been paid about double the average but that dropped off in the summer and of course their careers in football were short so many supplemented their income in another business. By the 70s/80s the differential was much greater but nowhere near enough to set a player up for life, hence the need for a new career for those who didn’t stay in football. Running a pub was a common choice but not always a great decision. Ex-Watford and West Ham Billy Jennings ran a wine bar under the old Holborn railway viaduct for a time.
I went back to Cambridge to see them knock Wolves out of the League Cup. George was centre forward and gave his marker, Emlyn Hughes, a right runaround. I was delighted when he signed for Watford soon after. Shame about his drinking. His career went downhill after he left Watford. He flopped at Newcastle.
A footnote to these highlights: the Notts centre-forward Trevor Christie went on to feature in another memorable game against Watford a few years later. He played for Walsall in an epic cup-tie that went to two replays including a 4-4 draw at Vicarage Road and was covered by ITV.
The difference in quality between the top flight and the lower divisions must have been far smaller back then - I already knew that to be the case regarding the first and second divisions, hence us getting 2nd place in our first season there, and other smaller clubs like Wimbledon, Luton, Swansea, QPR, Palace, Norwich and Ipswich flying high many seasons up to the mid-90s, but I’m surprised to realise how competitive cup games between top flight teams and teams below the second tier were. The fact we needed two replays to get past Walsall with our second best ever side and got to the 1984 final via a hard-fought win against a struggling third division team seems evidence of that.
Yes, that’s all largely true. The main thing to appreciate is that there were almost no foreign players (except some Irish) in our game, so there were many fewer very good players of international standard spread through the better teams. On top of that the lower wages on offer then meant that the talent wasn’t automatically concentrated in a few mega clubs as now. Back then the ‘big’ clubs were simply the ones that came from cities and therefore had bigger fan bases. The thing I remember particularly from that era was that, when a team was promoted (from whatever division), there was no expectation that they would be immediately relegated again as happens now. They had been promoted because their manager had put together a good team who would be expected to at least make a good fist of the next division up before making enhancements to progress further. Bear in mind, however, that it was much harder to gain promotion before the introduction of the play-offs and even more so when only two teams were promoted each year.
I am reliably informed by those in the building trade around Cambridge that the booze wasn't his only indulgence. Newcastle is the graveyard of many footballing careers.
They were brilliant games. Shakespeare played too. Walsall were my fourth team for a while after that.
This was also the time when you could pass the ball back to the keeper and he could pick it up, as perfected by the 1970s West Germany team. I found myself looking at this in surprise and then remembering that you could pick the ball up.
Another game with a Cally belter - a sudden moment of brilliance that has Alan Parry rushing his words to describe. And also appreciated by all the home fans. Another great away day from yesteryear .....
