Blissett and Jenkins pay tribute to legendary Watford correspondent

In this digital age of disposable news, there are those who will wonder what that term even means. But they should learn. Just as they should learn about Watford FC and football itself, simply by looking at the pieces written by this great sports journalist we were so lucky to have painting our history with his words.

So it is that I have taken so much time to try and find a way to express how I (one of his confessed favourite players) feel that Oli will no longer be there to have those perceptive chats, talk the truths and tell the real tales from the Vicarage that only a certain few of us actually share.

The reality checks he gave on a Friday we might not always have agreed with, but inevitably we learned that if it came to a view from the stand . . . Oli’s point of view was always spot on. And his pen was indeed mightier than any sword - or word on digital media platforms. Quite simply, he called it as he saw it. And he knew exactly what he saw! Oli Philips was and will remain Watford FC’s conscience.

A smiling Luther Blissett looks on as Elton John signs a copy of Oli Phillips' official history of Watford. (Image: Luther Blissett)

Only a week before his passing we had our latest catch up as Ross (Jenkins) his great friend let me know Oli was coming home from hospital. Chaos ensued. Trying each other, pressing the wrong buttons on the phone. Turning up the volume to compensate for failing hearing (mine!). It was a chat that was different to no other. Straight to the point, quickly dismissing his own situation to declare his spot on summary of those who today wear ‘our’ shirts.

And one thing Oli was always clear about was who rightfully had the credentials to do so. How often he would be talking to me (even recently) on football matters and remind me “Luther. My old dad used to say you can't expect more from a pig than a grunt.”

As I type this I am looking at Oli’s shirt, one which we just had made for the Former Players Club of which he had been instrumental in discussions about how to create, his thrill to be part of this legacy project. And for which he, alongside Tom Walley and the late Cliff Vassiliou, had been invited to join ‘the Boss’ on a forever golden bench of patrons. Gatekeepers of our supreme history and our Club values.

To try and describe our bond and camaraderie is impossible today. I know that my strike partner Ross feels the loss so deeply of the ‘grumpy man in the hat who became his great friend’, the sports writer who was spot on when he described that so called giraffe of a man as “the best line-leader I ever witnessed at Vicarage Road”. As always, well said Oli, spot on.

Little did I think that I would get a call from Ross, not with birthday greetings but to deliver the worst news about Oli. For some reason my birthday is linked in destiny to great influencers in my life, forever etched as one where we collectively said our farewells to Graham and now we have his press confidant alongside him. So, what to say about Oli? This latest loss to our family.

In the end, I give you (with apologies to the maestro himself) Oli’s own, almost prophetic, words. His tribute to Graham Taylor, with a little bit of Blissett difference thrown in (a bit like that Arsenal goal of mine he so loved seeing time and again).

I sat in front of the television last Thursday afternoon, aware of incipient pleasure conflicting with shock and sadness as I tried to come to terms with the devastating news. One after another the tributes were paraded and all of it was positive: reverential, warm and admiring.

I noted people who I would not have put down as being his readers or friends, enthuse over him, his career and achievements. I found it almost uplifting amidst the onset of my own depression; so much so that the fleeting thought passed through my mind, to phone Oli and compare notes.

I knew I would have to write an appreciation from myself and for the Former Players Club, which I dreaded - wholly inadequate to the task. This is the man who penned our fantastic club history. Who, alongside Mike Walters, wrote the Rocket Men. Not relying on interview notes, but his deep and personal knowledge of the game itself, our golden era and party to our most personal thoughts and absolute truths!

Hearing the tributes and knowing them to be true, I felt good for Oli on the day he had died to know how many friends he had amongst us. I had thought much about those past days when he put the town, not just the club, on the map. How Elton rightly had a stand named after him and Graham, much to his intense gratitude, had one too. And I had only just laughed with Oli that he was becoming an official award collector with the Media Suite now named after him (of which he was most chuffed) and then becoming one of the ‘100 people who made Watford’.

When I was given this same award by the Mayor and Council a week later I was all ready to call him and laugh at a record-breaking challenge, but sadly that moment was forever lost.

Fortunately for Watford as a town, and for Watford FC , the Club and everyone who ever supports it. Oli’s words and honest documentation of talent will be with us forever in his books and articles. Long may we read them as our history defines our entire character and future.

I leave you with a heavy heart and with gratitude that my life was made better by the men who made Watford FC, of which Oli was one and I also leave you with some of Oli’s words, not of his own, but by one of his favourite writers, F Scott Fitzgerald.

Those of you who truly know Watford FC, or literature, may well recognise them: they are the final lines of the Great Gatsby, used by Oli to preface his official Centenary of the Club. They mean something that resonated very deeply with myself and the many members of the Former Players Club. Whilst we strive for progress and change, inevitably the answers to our success will always lie in our past.

“Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…and one fine morning - So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Luther Blissett

Find out more about the Former Players Club here 

It was with such sadness that I reported to the Former Players Club that Oli Phillips had passed away peacefully in his beloved house in France. The man who put our actions into words every week. All of us as players had at some point been under the scrutiny of Oli’s reporting!

The Watford Observer sales grew as his personal style for match reporting gained supporter interest. He became the absolute go to for everyone who wanted to know what was happening with our club. Or really understand football. His knowledge of the game was exceptional. And he was always straight with his words.

I particularly loved our collaboration on Rocket Men in recent years, with so many great memories and astute observations not just of our glory days on the pitch. I especially liked his note about a conversation with Graham Taylor comparing myself and Luther to “Torres and Eusebio”. What can I say ? Oli knew his stuff so I am not going to disagree.

I could not have imagined then how this old striker, penned by him often as Giraffe or Bones, would end up as a lifelong close friend with this great writer. This brilliantly witty and often rather challenging giant of a man himself, in a hat ! But that is what happened.

So it was such sadness that I had to forward the news to my dear team mates and friends about Oli.

He will not be forgotten.

Ross Jenkins