Nigel Wray, owner of tenants Saracens RFC, called it a day as a member of the Watford board in August 2002.

Wray, who some thought was angling to take over Watford and combine with the rugby club at one stage, stepped down after it was decided by sundry club directors to invest further in the Hornets.

It was understood that with Wray already committed to Saracens, it would be unfair to expect him to help bail out Watford.

The tycoon told me from his base in Belgium that week, he was finding himself “increasingly abroad”.

Some regarded Wray as a potential bogeyman, particularly when he warehoused the shares back in 1998 as Watford won the title in the third tier.

It may be remembered that vice-chairman Rumi Verjee had been ousted because it was thought he was using the club to boost his profile and was reluctant to invest significant funds in the club.

It proved to be a tricky business forcing him to resign but when his shares were bought, they were “warehoused” by Wray and the new vice chairman Haig Oundjian, who was also Wray’s cousin.

The idea had been for them to be redistributed but this did not happen.

The fear had been that Wray, as owner of Saracens, would take over the club and render Watford the tenants and the rugby club as the owners. Indeed Watford FC staffers, when dealing with their rugby counterparts after the shares were switched, noted their opposite numbers exuded a certain buoyancy and confidence.

However, a year later, as he had always promised, Oundjian relaxed his family’s hold on the club.

I must stress that in all my dealings with Nigel Wray, I found him straightforward, ready to talk and very open. I recall being given his mobile and he always returned my calls.

On one occasion I phoned him to discover he was on the beach in France with his family. He had been participating in a game but when it was his turn to be “in” he asked me if I could wait a couple of minutes as he said he would soon be “out”.

His main interest was rugby and while he and Haig shared a childhood dream of producing a top-flight sports complex, it never really materialised although Oundjian, who was very influential in putting together the Harefield Academy, would point out that the dream was realised “in part”.

“I have actually been coming to a number of board meetings. I was on too many and have been unable to give them all the proper attention. I thought it was time to go,” said Wray.

To a degree the cost of football and the experience of the Luca Vialli spend-up were big influences on his decision.

“I still do want Watford to succeed. The painful lesson we all have to learn is that sport is a very expensive business. Players are very highly remunerated. They get sometimes over 100 per cent of the revenues. That makes it very difficult to finance.”

Was he commenting on the recent causes of the financial debacle when he added: “Sport moves people to fantastic emotion and makes them sometimes illogical and unreasonable. But it cannot all be about love and emotion because they play for hefty salaries and someone has to pay them.”

Certainly the cap fitted those involved in the Vialli fiasco.

Similarly Sir Elton John, having resigned from the board, declined to invest more in the club, which annoyed some members of the board. Elton had been a great enthusiast of the Vialli investment, trumpeting that it was the finest signing Watford had ever made. Yet, when the saga finished belly-up, he withdrew from the situation.

In fairness, Elton never had the same regard for or relationship with the directors of that era as he had for the likes of Geoff Smith, Jim Harrowell and Muir Stratford from the halcyon era. He saw them rightly as lifelong fans who happened to be on the board.

With supporters of Chelsea and Spurs and others who were not committed Watford fans before being directors, Elton was suspicious of the new board.

When Watford were reduced to selling the ground they had only just bought, some saw Elton’s desertion as leaving the club in the lurch. Graham Simpson, who had been a Watford fan in his youth, refused to comment publicly on the situation.

One gained the impression that Tim Shaw, a lifelong season ticket holder, would have liked to have said something as he put on his chartered accountancy hat and wrestled with the cheques, balances and debt, but Simpson was insistent they kept their powder dry. He believed that a schism with the star would be of no benefit to Watford in the long term.

I have been highly critical of Simpson on many counts but he proved to be shrewd on that one.

Elton had always kept in touch with the managers, often phoning them weekly or twice-weekly.

He continued to do this until “they appointed managers who could not speak English” and enjoyed the pure footballing side without the politics and personalities. When Simpson heard that Ray Lewington had been contacted by the star, he encouraged the manager to work on the relationship. He saw that as a positive sign – the equivalent of a fish nibbling on the line.

In a sense, Simpson was working on the wrong man for Lewington knew no other way than to play it straight and, as it happened, that honesty proved to be the perfect approach.