A good point. I imagine this is the exact reason why the new KO time hasn't been announced yet. I imagine Herts & Beds police were dismayed when it was announced that pubs would reopen in the same week we play Luton. That is bad luck to be honest.
How many pubs in Luton actually have beer gardens? And why is this a major issue if no Watford fans are travelling?
Well, the Watford hierarchy made the decision to board up the GT statue outside the Vic when the game was being played behind closed doors earlier this season, so maybe the police are concerned that some fans may still try to travel to Luton and cause trouble?
No my point is that whole affair has a completely different atmosphere than any other game. There are of course other places where you don't feel especially safe but a game against them is whole different ball game. To say that they irrelevant as a rival is not correct either. We may have been streets ahead in the last few years but we are currently in the same division. If there were fans at this, it would kick off at lunch time regardless of TV coverage, there would be police, some with dogs, some on horses, we would probably have to all go on the coaches. If we played Bournemouth this weekend with fans it would be no difference from playing Rotherham in regard to Police presence, safety etc. I think most fans of an age will always regard Luton as the main rival while others come and go like we had with Ipswich for a few years, Southend for a while and maybe even QPR. These generally happen when we are different league to Luton but as soon as we play them again all other rivalries are secondary. If you don't feel the same then that's obviously down to you
You only need a high police presence to control the trash that follows Luton. The trouble will always come from them, but just because they have an ASBO following doesn't make them a rival. It just gives the thugs a day out. I've not seen a single tweet regarding the game giving it large. No one has signed up on here to give us banter. The same occurred in the first match. The build up was non-existent. There has always been a hooligan element who latch onto the Watford v Luton fixture. It's nothing more than that.
I decided to risk my eyesight by visiting their Outlaws board. They subtitle it ‘Avenue of Evil’ which sums up the zeitgeist. They have surprisingly few posts specifically about Saturday; from reading some comments on here, I thought they’d be building it up more. They do however take the moral high ground re: Not countenancing being sponsored by betting firms Not charging some charity walkers for bottles of water when they arrived at the ground....I have no idea of the context And accusing GT of being a paedophile-facilitator following the recent revelations They also claim ‘they’ve never shown since the ‘70s’ which is redolent of selective amnesia since I clearly remember the ‘famed’ Maple Corner being taken over by the Bogside in early ‘80s, and indeed, the equally renowned MuGS not crawling out from beneath their stones until after the ‘decommissioning’ of said Bogside after the shenanigans accompanying the cup semi versus Spuds at Villa Park. But they don’t like us much.
It’s an absolute disgrace this match is being moved. Ditto the cricketers in the game I will be watching have to down tools between 2.50pm and 4.10pm. Let those who revel in the bizarre sycophancy shown towards the unelected Head of State and entourage stay glued to their tv for non-stop coverage and let those of us who have no interest at all live our normal lives as we should be allowed to on a democracy.
Spot on mate, spot on! It had to be done, just good old fashioned fisty cuffs nothing more sinister than that, and they started it I just finished it
I know we hate them, but for everyone speaking about how **** they are.. they've beaten Norwich twice this season, Reading, Barnsley, Bournemouth and will never know how they didn't win at Brentford. Will need to be at our absolute best for the three remaining away games.
*Just a disclaimer for anyone like me whose head exploded on first reading that - one of them was in the cup! The reverse fixture in the league a month ago saw Norwich run out 3-0 victors, securing an aggregate victory in league play after their initial 3-1 loss at the beginning of December.
If you think it's that one sided then you may need to open your eyes a little next time we play. I've seen plenty of organised groups over the years go out looking for their supporters. There are plenty who follow Watford that would cause issues, probably more now than there has been for a while. In all the years of going I've never experienced or seen such unbridled joy as I did on 4th Oct 1997. There is a reason for that. I enjoyed beating Bournemouth 3-0 last season but only because it was a massive win against a team in a similar position to ourselves. I would never watch those goals again but would happily watch the 4-0 massacre every day for the rest of my life. I think the reason you don't see much on social media is that fans cannot go the game. In fact I've not heard of any football related violence the whole time we've had Covid. Even Celtic vs Rangers passed without any issues and they're in the same city and their hatred is second to none
If you bring all your logins, you could do some real damage....and double their pre-covid average gate.
I don’t know whether you follow the England national team at all, but they’ve played Croatia a lot in recent years. Would you consider Croatia to be a bigger rival to England than Scotland are?
Bloody Croats. Diving about like Tom Daley. Getting fawned over by match of the day. Plucky my arse. Cannot stand the lot of em. Scotland? Meh nothing to me anymore.
One of the Norwich games was in the cup when Norwich had a lot of players on international duty, I believe the other one was when they were in a bit of an injury crisis. Bournemouth had Lerma sent off very harshly (oh how the heart bleeds!) in the first half, so I don't know how much we can look into those. Of course they are in mid-table when worse teams have troubled us or even taken points off us this season (they themselves did miss an absolute sitter just before we scored) but...other than that incident they produced absolutely nothing and made us look pretty creative even though the squad back then wasn't a patch on what we have now. They did look pretty horrid at the weekend too
Was that the Solihull "evening" ? One other factor in the rivalry since 70's/80's is their ground. Then it could hold 20k up until early 90's and you could take 4/5k and be in at least two of the three pens in the KR end. But once they dropped their capacity to 10k and switched ends so only c 1.5k would be allowed in the Oak Rd end the balance of support dropped as we could only have 15% of the fans v the 2002 league cup fiasco when Simpson/Ashton allowed 4k to come out of a 14k gate. Here is a picture from their site of the packed away end (all 3 pens) so c8/9k at the Xmas game in 1982-the biggest attendance (21k) since the infamous 1969 game which conveniently is hardly ever mentioned by them as they choose to select the 70's onwards.
I actually quite like Bournemouth in all honesty. I find it a little bit pathetic that anyone would even consider them a real rival. I imagine those that do are the younger generation that have never witnessed a derby match and base their rivalry on twitter comments. If we go up this season and Bournemouth don't I doubt anyone will even remember them in a couple of years. Put it this way even when The Scum were in the conference myself and plenty of other Hornets checked their results and took pleasue in them.getting beat in non league I remember one afternoon when they were beaten 4-1 away to Grimsby in the conference and whe the score come through the Rookery cheered like we had scored.
I don't want us to just beat them, I want us to embarrass them. I hope we don't stop until their fans are in tears.
Apparantly he has been unilaterally declared 'father of the nation'...I think King AEthelstan might have something to say about that.
