SO, my Dream Team is taking shape with the first nine in place as: Coton; Welbourne, Sims, McClelland, Rostron; Taylor, Jackett, Barnes; Holton.

I would accept that seven of those players are taken from the club's squads in the top flight, which must be the best teams the club has ever had because they finished higher up the professional ranks than any other.

I would also accept that people might quibble over the selection of Duncan Welbourne. They would argue that Pat Rice was a captain and a leader and that Nigel Gibbs also played at the top level and for a similar period of time with the club.

But one has to doff the cap to the past in such exercises, otherwise one would simply chose the side that finished runners-up in the old First Division as the highest-achieving outfit to don Watford shirts.

Holton? Well it was well-documented at the time that he had some years of top-flight football left in him at the age of 29, but his requirements of part-time football, meant that he had to look further down the League. Known as the greatest uncapped player of his time, Holton is one of the first names on my team sheet.

But what of the strike-force? There are some marvellous players to chose from. Big Ross Jenkins did well but had only six months in the top-flight before injury resulted in his being moved to the sidelines in 1983.

Mo Johnston, the most disinterested interviewee that side of Jason Lee I have ever met, was an extremely impressive striker and so too was Billy Jennings, who played and starred at the top level and was probably the finest header of the ball I have ever seen.

But I am going back in years, and anyone who has read my columns before, will know just what is coming next.

Now when the ball is played up front, I want it to stick. I don't want it coming back. I want it to be brought down and laid off, or the striker to turn with it and take on the defence.

That may be a novel concept but if you want to see a ball stick like it has never stuck before, then the number nine in my side would be Charlie Livesey.

People have argued that he could not have been that good and that distance and personal prejudice has blinded me to the realities and practicalities.

But he was hailed as a boy wonder at one stage and played, performed and starred in the top flight. He partnered the young Jimmy Greaves incidentally.

But Charlie was never convinced about a career in the game. He enjoyed playing with his mates but there were other things for a 1950's teenager and Charlie embraced them all.

While Holton, a part-timer would train two nights a week with ferocious intent, Charlie always had a truly part-time attitude. The game gave him glamour and Charlie drank and clubbed and ran it all off on a Saturday when he had a mind.

He fell from grace, fell out with managers and eventually found himself at Vicarage Road, overweight and 25 years of age when Bill McGarry took over as manager.

Now when Graham Taylor took over at Vicarage Road, he had every player in, one by one and, some recall, they sat on a ridiculously small and uncomfortable seat (what Bertie Mee would call a high chair), while Taylor sat behind a desk.

It put the players at a psychological disadvantage, particularly those wanting to negotiate new contracts. It was a way of bringing people down to earth.

McGarry had another approach, some 14 years earlier, adopting the role of a wise-cracking sergeant major, he had all the players lined up on the pitch at Vicarage Road.

He walked down the line, eyeballing each player in turn and making some cutting remark. "I couldn't play you over Christmas. You are so bloody chicken, you might get eaten" and other such encouraging rejoinders.

"Lad you are so slow parting with that ball, the pubs have shut, let alone the opposition defence, by the time you release it," was another introduction.

Another player was reminded that he had kicked Bill McGarry when the Hornets played Bournemouth the previous season.

"If you don't regRet that now, you soon will do."

To say Bill was not exactly politically correct in his staff relations was something of an understatement but he gave us four things, apart from a season that was then a record. The first was he signed Duncan Welbourne. The second was he brought George Harris to the fore; the third was Z-Cars and the other was Charlie Livesey.

"Charlie. Charlie Livesey," he said when he came to dapper Charlie standing nonchalantly in line that day. "Are you the Charlie Livesey that used to be the Boy Wonder? The lad who scored all those goals?

"You look vaguely the same but a lot fatter. But the Boy Wonder ends up at Watford and then asks to play as a half-back in the reserves because he can't cut it up front.

"Whatever happened to you Charlie?"

With that, McGarry moved on to tongue-lash the next of his new charges, but he left a grim-faced Charlie behind him. The easy smile, the quick line in banter, were replaced by a determination never to be humiliated by this balding manager again.

A slim-line Charlie emerged from pre-season training and became the darling that season. It was the first season which really embraced modern football thinking. Until then, the team that scored the most goals won games. Around that time, the thinking began to creep into the game that the team that conceded the least and worked the hardest usually won the most.

Everyone defended back, worked their butts off and had two instructions when they received the ball: kick it up to Charlie and run like hell up field to join him.

That stickability when he received the ball, was essential giving Watford's nine-man defence time to break out and consider attacking options.

Livesey would take the centre half for a walk up the halfway line. Charlie could dribble, shoot, head, shield a ball like a Barnes or a Scullion and he was also the sort of character who knew someone who could get you a decent telly for a fiver.

Ross Jenkins was more active and a harder worker and probably had better chest control. But Charlie had Shearer's build and a number of Barnes' skills. I suppose the nearest modern player to remind me a little of Charlie, was Craig Ramage. Rambo did not have the pace but he had elements of his predecessor's trickery on the ball. Livesey, that one, highly-motivated season, was the most complete centre forward I ever saw at Vicarage Road and one capable of taking on a defence on his own.

He scored what was one of the greatest goals ever scored at the ground, taking on an Oldham defence and ignoring the simple pass to his unmarked colleague Jimmy MacAnearney, before taking on another defender and then thumping the ball past the keeper.

He then turned and walked back towards the centre circle, without a hint of celebration, quietly looking at MacAnearney and asking: "Was there something you wanted Jimmy?"

I am totally biased towards Charlie's one season. If there was a player I wanted to be, he was it: the playground bully, dribbling the ball the entire breaktime, back and forth, while scores of smaller kids tried unsuccessfully to wrest it off him.

Biased i may be but Trefor Jones, who worshipped Cliff Holton, acknowledged that season in his Watford FC Illustrated Who's Who. He said that Livesey's career "was mostly one of under-achievement. He nevertheless nearly inspired Watford's first advance to the Second Division with a season of cavalier displays and an individual virtuosity comparable with almost anything ever seen at Vicarage Road."

Before being sold and fetching much more on the market than any previous Watford striker, Charlie had another thing to commend him. His last Watford goal was scored at Luton.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.