Watford statement on Troy Deeney (From Watford Observer)

Surbiton wrote:
One set of rules for footballers, another for the rest of us. Great message they have put out, not! I for one will not be cheering or applauding him, no matter how many goals he scores.

jasonwatford wrote:
??? Really go back to bed and take your medication.

Roy Stockdill wrote:
After a fantastic summer of sport with the Olympics and Paralympics, a feast of gold medals for our brilliant cyclists, rowers, sailors and athletes, etc, and magnificent displays of sportsmanship and courage from all who took part, it didn't take long, did it, for the nation to revert to type and the tawdry spectacle of thuggish, thick footballers and moronic fans to dominate the back pages again?

I can think of very few situations in which someone would have gone to jail and kept their job when they came out. But, as ever, football is always willing to turn a blind eye to just about anything for cynical, hypocritical reasons. I used to love football but the game today stinks to high heaven with cheating players diving and abusing the referee, foreign mercenaries who know no loyalty to anyone or anything except their outrageous pay packets, crooked agents, bent managers and dodgy foreign owners out for a quick buck.

I don't know why anybody watches it any more because the once great game is dying on its feet from, cheating, corruption and greed. Only problem is, too many fans are so thick and wall-eyed they can't see it.

Roy Stockdill wrote:
>That Boy Troy Deeney he's still a Horn, he's still a Horn , that boy Troy Deeney he's still a Horn! YES..<

Ah, there we see the mentality, educational ability, sophistication and literary skills of the average football fan in full cry!

Roy Stockdill wrote:
Did you manage to raise your carcass from the gutter long enough to make such a witty remark or did your mum write it for you?

ChrisG85 wrote:
However you see it there are 2 sides to each story. Personally, for me, Deeney should have been released by the club as soon as sentencing was passed - the majority of employers would have done this if it had been any other person. Kicking someone in the head isn't a "mistake" that everyone makes. He knew he was doing it. He may show remorse now but that is no excuse for the actions he took.

I'm pretty sure i'll get shot down for this, and probably be accused of "not supporting the club" so if any of you knuckle-draggers want to pipe up, go ahead.

Surbiton wrote:
One set of rules for footballers, another for the rest of us. Great message they have put out, not! I for one will not be cheering or applauding him, no matter how many goals he scores.

Roy Stockdill wrote:
I don't watch it very often, apart from the occasional big game on TV, i.e. an international or promising Cup or European match. I haven't been to a live game for about 40 years. I enjoy watching a wonderful team like Barcelona, the Spanish national side or Brazil, who play real football. But let's be honest, how often do you see anything like that in England? Usually, it's something like Sunderland against Stoke City with a bunch of plodding kickers and that giraffe fellow called Crouch. You wouldn't say the way Chelsea won the European Championship was exactly pretty or good football, would you?

buckler wrote:

Roy Stockdill wrote:
Did you manage to raise your carcass from the gutter long enough to make such a witty remark or did your mum write it for you?

Been busy earning loads of money while you were crawling out of your stone! As I said do one old timer this forum is for football fans not grumpy goats picking hard men's grammar up!

watfordway wrote:
Troy made a mistake under the influence of alcohol. He will obviously be monitored by the club and you would have thought that we have put conditions in place to minimise the risk of re-offending. This is really positive from us and shows are family and community spirit. What we have done is given someone, a human being a second chance. I am proud to be a hornet right now.

watfordway wrote:
Troy made a mistake under the influence of alcohol. He will obviously be monitored by the club and you would have thought that we have put conditions in place to minimise the risk of re-offending. This is really positive from us and shows are family and community spirit. What we have done is given someone, a human being a second chance. I am proud to be a hornet right now.

gasguzzler wrote:
Im trying to justify how the club I supported and followed from a boy 'the family club' could come to this decision but I just can't.
This is just so wrong.
My 6 yr old boy came home from school and asked why Deeney was in jail,I told him the truth Deeney had kicked someone in the head when he was on ground.
Now he could be playing for the hornets.What kind of message is this to the young supporters like my son?.

gasguzzler wrote:
Im trying to justify how the club I supported and followed from a boy 'the family club' could come to this decision but I just can't.
This is just so wrong.
My 6 yr old boy came home from school and asked why Deeney was in jail,I told him the truth Deeney had kicked someone in the head when he was on ground.
Now he could be playing for the hornets.What kind of message is this to the young supporters like my son?.

tonyevans22 wrote:

buckler wrote:

Roy Stockdill wrote:
Did you manage to raise your carcass from the gutter long enough to make such a witty remark or did your mum write it for you?

Been busy earning loads of money while you were crawling out of your stone! As I said do one old timer this forum is for football fans not grumpy goats picking hard men's grammar up!

So your name is Harry Enfield eh? You could spend some of that money on the NHS especially the brain surgeon department,always happy to help just like the Halifax.

Roy Stockdill wrote:
>We haven't given him a second chance. We have retained an asset. This was completely a business decision.<

On that basis, all those bent City dealers like Nick Leeson who went to jail for fraud would also retain their jobs because they were an asset, not to mention all those crooked bankers.

Hmmmmm.....interesti

ng thinking!

smeg wrote:

Roy Stockdill wrote:
>We haven't given him a second chance. We have retained an asset. This was completely a business decision.<

On that basis, all those bent City dealers like Nick Leeson who went to jail for fraud would also retain their jobs because they were an asset, not to mention all those crooked bankers.

Hmmmmm.....interesti


ng thinking!

Nick Leeson lost millions and caused the collapse of Barings. How exactly was he as asset?

wheelsonfire wrote:
A very sad day for Watford FC. I am for the first time in nearly 50 years ashamed to be a Watford fan.
If I hadn't already renewed my season ticket then I certainly wouldn't now.
I think the club should allow refunds!!!!!!!!!
Oh well the only redeeming factor is that the dolt will probably never play for us again and be shipped of at the end of his contract. He really is the most untallented striker I have seen at the club.No league club will buy him but he could end up with our friends up the road on a free. Serve him and them right!

Dr,Oftaw wrote:

Roy Stockdill wrote:
I don't watch it very often, apart from the occasional big game on TV, i.e. an international or promising Cup or European match. I haven't been to a live game for about 40 years. I enjoy watching a wonderful team like Barcelona, the Spanish national side or Brazil, who play real football. But let's be honest, how often do you see anything like that in England? Usually, it's something like Sunderland against Stoke City with a bunch of plodding kickers and that giraffe fellow called Crouch. You wouldn't say the way Chelsea won the European Championship was exactly pretty or good football, would you?

so as you are not a wfc fan why don`t you keep your big nose out of it then, your bigoted views are not welcome.

Roy Stockdill wrote:
Indeed, but I expect there were those who thought Leeson was brilliant until they discovered the consequences of his deals. It's probably the same with footballers - someone thinks they're wonderful and well worth buying until they reveal their true qualities (or lack of them). It's called smoke and mirrors.

I don't know how much Deeney cost or where he came from, but I imagine Watford will probably find him a liability eventually. Probably better to cut their losses now and offload him onto Stevenage Borough or some such club.

smeg wrote:

Roy Stockdill wrote:
Indeed, but I expect there were those who thought Leeson was brilliant until they discovered the consequences of his deals. It's probably the same with footballers - someone thinks they're wonderful and well worth buying until they reveal their true qualities (or lack of them). It's called smoke and mirrors.

I don't know how much Deeney cost or where he came from, but I imagine Watford will probably find him a liability eventually. Probably better to cut their losses now and offload him onto Stevenage Borough or some such club.

Sometimes it is better to say nothing and be thought a fool...

Andrew1963 wrote:
Getting back to the motivation to retain the player.Is it because Zola sees him as a key component of the team, or the club believes he has value in the new transfer window? if the former i doubt he will be fit enough to feature much before December, if the latter would we get more than £250,000?

Roy Stockdill wrote:
Surely, if Watford FC have an iota of sense, they will move Deeney on the moment they find somebody daft enough to buy him - probably to the lower leagues. Isn't that what every club who ever employed Joey Barton did?

At the end of the day, thugs who have no place in football or any other sport will wither away and never be heard of again, not least because they will have no further value to their clubs or their agents.

Roy Stockdill wrote:
Funny, isn't it, that it's almost always football that chooses to turn a blind eye to criminal behaviour because it suits those who run the game and the clubs?

I find it difficult to think of any other sport in which people who transgress against the law and go to jail are then welcomed back into the fold. I doubt, for instance, that those bent Pakistani cricketers who were in the pockets of Far East betting crooks will ever play again. And I seem to recall that snooker players who were mixed up in illegal betting scams had their careers ended.

Why is football so arrogant that it thinks crimes can be ignored and forgiven?

If Deeney is playing for Watford in a year's time I will be very surprised. More likely for some obscure outfit in the Blue Square South for peanuts.

wheelsonfire wrote:
Always an interesting debate as to who was our worst ever striker!
I would say it's between Ellington,Morallee and anyone remember Trevor Senior?
I would definately put Deeney in here despite the goals he scored last season. I admit he does try hard!!!!
I would downgrade Ellington and Senior because they had sucessfull careers before joining the Horns. Morallee and Deeney were crap before they came and still crap when they left!

Bush Hornet wrote:
By the way, the whole Olympics argument... how great these sportsmen and women are in comparison to plebby overpaid footballers blah blah blah. It is an empty, meaningless bit of sentimentality. Some of the Olympic athletes did well and made us proud. But who really wants to watch diving or cycling week in and week out? And what's so great about posh people who sit on a horse while it dances? Roy, if you want to follow rowing or table tennis then good for you. I wish you well. But the rewards in many of those sports will never be as lucrative or high profile - because they're essentially dull - so there will never be as many villains for you to point the finger at.

Roy Stockdill wrote:
>We haven't given him a second chance. We have retained an asset. This was completely a business decision.<

On that basis, all those bent City dealers like Nick Leeson who went to jail for fraud would also retain their jobs because they were an asset, not to mention all those crooked bankers.

Hmmmmm.....interesti

ng thinking!

Roy Stockdill wrote:
Actually, I have very little interest in swimming and certainly none at all in table tennis. I spent most of my Olympic viewing glued to events in the velodrome where our fantastic cyclists wiped the floor with the rest of the world, just as they did 4 years ago in Beijing. Seven gold medals out of a possible 10 just about says it all and this is the one and only sport in which we totally dominate the world - at football, never!

Can anyone seriously compare the amazing feat of Bradley Wiggins in winning the Tour de France - the most gruelling event in world sport in which the competitors ride around 150 miles every day for 3 weeks, from the heat of the plains to the freezing cold of the Alps - and then go on to win the time trial gold medal at the Olympics? How does this seriously compare with pampered, half-witted footballers who have to play a 90-minute game of football now and then, poor things?

But, then, I wouldn't expect football fans to understand anything at all beyond their extremely limited mental powers and exceptionally narrow horizons.

Bush Hornet wrote:

Roy Stockdill wrote:
Actually, I have very little interest in swimming and certainly none at all in table tennis. I spent most of my Olympic viewing glued to events in the velodrome where our fantastic cyclists wiped the floor with the rest of the world, just as they did 4 years ago in Beijing. Seven gold medals out of a possible 10 just about says it all and this is the one and only sport in which we totally dominate the world - at football, never!

Can anyone seriously compare the amazing feat of Bradley Wiggins in winning the Tour de France - the most gruelling event in world sport in which the competitors ride around 150 miles every day for 3 weeks, from the heat of the plains to the freezing cold of the Alps - and then go on to win the time trial gold medal at the Olympics? How does this seriously compare with pampered, half-witted footballers who have to play a 90-minute game of football now and then, poor things?

But, then, I wouldn't expect football fans to understand anything at all beyond their extremely limited mental powers and exceptionally narrow horizons.

Can anyone seriously compare cycling with football? No. Don't know why you try, to be honest. Football is a beautiful game (apart from when Stoke play) with so many variables and dynamics, whereas cycling is about getting from A to B. Personally I prefer to walk or drive.

(I agree that France is a wonderful country though. I've been there many times and can't wait to return.)

Sorry Roy, can't have a serious argument with you. You've already decided that all modern footballers are greedy thugs or wimps, and you've written off all fans as narrow and thick. At the moment it's difficult to care for your view. Are you anything other than a supercilious, opinionated old git?

Roy Stockdill wrote:
I bet neither of you would say No to Victoria Pendleton, though!

Roy Stockdill wrote:
>Last season I was sickened to see footage of a rugby player hyper extending an opponents elbow whilst he was caught at the bottom of a maul. This was barely covered in the press, imagine what the reaction of the media would have been if something similar had happened on a football field?<

I presume this was rugby union (not league) and I agree that some horrific incidents have happened on the field, particularly stamping and eye gouging. However, rugby union doesn't attract the same sort of coverage as football, so you are quite correct in that sense.

Yes, cycling too has had its problems but I believe the days of drug abuse are over, especially with the Lance Armstrong saga.

The point that Patrick Collins makes, however, is that these problems - like drugs in cycling and athletics and cheating at cricket to win bets - happened amongst competitors and not fans and spectators. I don't recall riots among spectators at Wimbledon, or in a cricket ground, cycling velodrome, rugby ground or anywhere else. It is only football that is frequently marred by fighting amongst spectators and where opposition players and referees and other officials are routinely abused.

I accept that not all football fans are to blame, but you must agree that the game does tend to attract the uneducated lower orders of the pot-bellied, tattooed, knucklings-dragging-

on-the-ground Neanderthal ape minority!

Bush Hornet wrote:

Roy Stockdill wrote:
Actually, I have very little interest in swimming and certainly none at all in table tennis. I spent most of my Olympic viewing glued to events in the velodrome where our fantastic cyclists wiped the floor with the rest of the world, just as they did 4 years ago in Beijing. Seven gold medals out of a possible 10 just about says it all and this is the one and only sport in which we totally dominate the world - at football, never!

Can anyone seriously compare the amazing feat of Bradley Wiggins in winning the Tour de France - the most gruelling event in world sport in which the competitors ride around 150 miles every day for 3 weeks, from the heat of the plains to the freezing cold of the Alps - and then go on to win the time trial gold medal at the Olympics? How does this seriously compare with pampered, half-witted footballers who have to play a 90-minute game of football now and then, poor things?

But, then, I wouldn't expect football fans to understand anything at all beyond their extremely limited mental powers and exceptionally narrow horizons.

Can anyone seriously compare cycling with football? No. Don't know why you try, to be honest. Football is a beautiful game (apart from when Stoke play) with so many variables and dynamics, whereas cycling is about getting from A to B. Personally I prefer to walk or drive.

(I agree that France is a wonderful country though. I've been there many times and can't wait to return.)

Sorry Roy, can't have a serious argument with you. You've already decided that all modern footballers are greedy thugs or wimps, and you've written off all fans as narrow and thick. At the moment it's difficult to care for your view. Are you anything other than a supercilious, opinionated old git?

Roy Stockdill wrote:
Yes, being a northerner and a Yorkshireman, I am very much a rugby league man. I used to support Halifax but they haven't been a top club for some years.

Rugby League has always been the working class game, except in Wales where many Welsh union players came from the mines and went north to turn professional and join a league club in the bad old days when the two codes had nothing to do with one another. Of course, players are free now to move between the two games, ever since Rugby Union went professional.

However, though Rugby League is principally a working class game, you never hear of fights or trouble among the spectators at a match.

There does seem to be more thuggery on the pitch in union games rather than league.

Alfiesballs wrote:
Roy
Bit of a word smith, good grammar & excellent vocabulary that’s for sure. You like to read his own words and I suspect your own voice, duelling with people you consider to be intellectual inferiors. However if they are so inferior and “thick” why bother, why not find yourself some more worthy opponents for your literary duals. You may be intelligent fella, but you are one hell of boring toad.

Alfiesballs wrote:
Roy
Bit of a word smith, good grammar & excellent vocabulary that’s for sure. You like to read his own words and I suspect your own voice, duelling with people you consider to be intellectual inferiors. However if they are so inferior and “thick” why bother, why not find yourself some more worthy opponents for your literary duals. You may be intelligent fella, but you are one hell of boring toad.

Roy Stockdill wrote:
Actually, old boy, I had a marvellous life as a News of the World journalist. From 1967 to 1977 I travelled the world as a reporter and feature writer, meeting all kinds of people from the rich and famous to down-and-outs in the gutter and writing about them all. I met more famous people than you've had hot dinners!

I then spent 10 years as a senior features executive commissioning and overseeing other journalists writing news and features stories,

The last 10 years of my 30 years in Fleet Street I spent as a serialisations editor editing and serialising the memoirs of famous people, also fictional books etc, for the paper and Sunday magazine. I adapted and published the memoirs of people like Barbara Windsor, Jim Davidson, Tony Blackburn, Bob Monkhouse, Alex "Hurricane" Higgins, Tessa Sanderson, Les Dawson and others, plus a considerable number of books by authors like Jackie Collins for which I paid sums well in advance of £1000,000. I also sub-edited and adapted their autobiographies and biographies for serialisation. I was widely regarded throughout Fleet Street as the best in the business at what I did. I also earned a lot of money.

And what did you do, old son?

Roy Stockdill wrote:
Actually, old boy, I had a marvellous life as a News of the World journalist. From 1967 to 1977 I travelled the world as a reporter and feature writer, meeting all kinds of people from the rich and famous to down-and-outs in the gutter and writing about them all. I met more famous people than you've had hot dinners!

I then spent 10 years as a senior features executive commissioning and overseeing other journalists writing news and features stories,

The last 10 years of my 30 years in Fleet Street I spent as a serialisations editor editing and serialising the memoirs of famous people, also fictional books etc, for the paper and Sunday magazine. I adapted and published the memoirs of people like Barbara Windsor, Jim Davidson, Tony Blackburn, Bob Monkhouse, Alex "Hurricane" Higgins, Tessa Sanderson, Les Dawson and others, plus a considerable number of books by authors like Jackie Collins for which I paid sums well in advance of £1000,000. I also sub-edited and adapted their autobiographies and biographies for serialisation. I was widely regarded throughout Fleet Street as the best in the business at what I did. I also earned a lot of money.

And what did you do, old son?