Behind the scenes as Watford prepared for '99 Play-Off Final

And after such a wretched season still sadly fresh in the memory, plus the outcome of Saturday’s game at Wembley, it felt like a good moment to share some inside stories from May 1999 when Watford secured promotion to the Premier League.

This is the first part of a two-part piece which will - hopefully - bring smiles to the faces of those who remember it, and encourage those that don’t to believe it can happen again.

After all, just two years before that brilliant day at the old Wembley Stadium, the Hornets had finished 13th in what is now known as League One.

Life as a Watford fan has been every bit as up and down over longer periods as it has for the last 11 years. It’s not a new thing that the Hornets go through peaks and troughs.

Back in 1987, John Barnes left to join Liverpool; our greatest manager of all time, Graham Taylor, departed to become manager of Aston Villa; the club appointed Dave Bassett who managed to turn a team that had finished ninth in the top-flight the season before into relegation fodder in a few months; and Watford were relegated by quite some margin after a wretched season.

All of that happened in the space of just nine months, and after relegation in 1988 the club didn’t return to the top tier of English football until that fantastic day at Wembley in 1999.

How did I get to be on the inside in 1999? For those that don’t know (lots of you I’m sure) I spent more than the first decade of my working life on the Watford Observer sports desk alongside the late, great Oli Phillips.

I actually began as a 15-year-old in my spare time and school holidays, and then got a job at the WO straight after my A-levels in 1989.

In April 1998, I was then hired by another hero of mine who, sadly, I can also no longer go to for a bit of advice and a chat: Graham Taylor.

He had returned to Vicarage Road and his experiences with England had not only told him the media was very different in the late 1990s to it was when he first arrived in the late 1970s, but the levels of coverage and demands that would bring meant it needed someone to look after that part of the club’s work.

I started the role at the end of the 1997/98 season as Watford were winning what is now League One and were on their way to the Championship.

Outside of Watford – and possibly outside of only GT’s mind – a second successive promotion was not likely, and so while we bobbed around in the top half of the table the thought of going up to the Premier League was a distant one.

With eight games to go it was looking like mission impossible. But as we know, that is an area GT specialised in, and a run of six consecutive wins lifted Watford into the play-off places and it was secured with a 1-0 win over Grimsby Town on the last day of the season at Vicarage Road.

Peter Kennedy celebrates scoring the winner against Grimsby that secured a placed in the play-offs in 1999. (Image: Action Images)

I’d spent that season travelling with GT, the coaching staff and players to away games, either on the coach or on a train. That meant I’d got to know the players very well, and they had trust in me to help them with any media requests.

The play-off semi-final victory over Birmingham City was a blur – suddenly you have two extra games that come quite close together and which are extremely tense.

The penalties at the end of the second leg at St Andrews are probably the most fraught and nervous period of my working life. I had to look for work purposes, but I really wanted to hide my eyes behind my hands.

Having won, I remember the players not being allowed into the Birmingham players’ bar after the game, and so we were left wandering around near the coach before getting a police escort away from the ground as some of the very sporting locals sent us on their way with good wishes and many gestures of goodwill. Or something like that.

And so to the final. We had 11 days between the second leg at Birmingham and the big day at Wembley, but we also had a lot of media demands to meet in that period.

Alec Chamberlain makes the penalty save at Birmingham that sent Watford to Wembley. (Image: Action Images)

It probably pales into relative insignificance compared to the needs of the media of today, but back in 1999 it was still a considerable list. And to be fair to GT and the players, those media requests may have been high up my list of priorities but they were probably more of an irritant at such an important time of preparation.

One thing that Sky asked for straight away was to take the entire Watford squad out for a day, to film them doing something away from football, to get interviews and footage of them having some down time.

They asked the same of Bolton, and when word came back that Colin Todd didn’t want to as he thought it was a distraction, GT said straight away we should do it.

Todd has said he didn’t want to treat the play-off final differently to any other game, and that included what they did in the days leading up to it.

GT felt the opposite: the Play-Off Final wasn’t just any game, it was very different. He also saw that as a chance to play some mind games, and so we were very accommodating to Sky.

They took the staff and players go-karting at a track in Docklands, pretty much across the Thames from London City Airport.

There were heats and then a final – one of those races where the cars are parked up in order of qualifying time and the drivers run to their cars when the pistol goes.

I can’t remember who did well at the driving because my time was spent taking players and staff to the Sky crew, who moved around the karting site to get different backdrops.

It was a good afternoon out that reduced the tension for a few hours, but also got Sky very much onside with us.

Their crew told us that Todd was so insistent that nothing was different for the final that he had said he didn’t want to have special outfits for the day at Wembley, and they would travel to the game in tracksuits.

That was music to GT’s ears, as he had already got suits on order for all of us. I can’t remember if Todd changed his mind or not, but all of the Watford party had vey nice dark blue suits with a yellow and red floral buttonhole.

The Wembley suits, as modelled by Alec Chamberlain, Tommy Smith and Nick Wright (Image: Action Images)

As well as the afternoon out, another media duty was to allow TV/photographers into a training session, and let them get footage and photographs of the team preparing.

At that time, Watford used to train during the season at Honeypot Lane in Stanmore but, as soon as the season was over, those grounds were used for cricket.

Such was the lack of expectancy of being involved in the play-offs that nobody had asked about extending Watford’s usage beyond the first week of May.

So, before the semi-final, training was held at both Merchant Taylors’ School in Northwood and West Herts Sports Club in Park Avenue, Watford.

The ‘open’ training session - as the media refer to them - was to be held at West Herts, and I met with GT to discuss what the media had requested and what we would offer.

General shots of players running around were easy to do, but there was particular demand from the TV channels to have the players doing something recognisable, like playing a game or taking set-pieces.

“Tell them we’ll put on a session of corners and free-kicks,” said GT, adding: “Actually, emphasise that we’re really keen to let them have loads of footage of that.”

My face must have given off an ‘are you sure?’ vibe because he explained: “Someone from Bolton will ask someone at Sky for all the footage, not just the bits that they show on TV. And they’ll get it. So let’s give them half an hour of set-pieces that are totally the opposite of what we’re actually going to use.”

He ended with one of his little chuckles, took off his glasses and put them in the case, and headed off leaving me wondering why I hadn’t thought of that.

Sure enough the media duly trotted down to West Herts one mid-morning in the week leading up to the game and watched the players go through a warm-up before they started ‘working’ on set-plays.

Players and staff were taken out for interviews at various points, and GT was very accommodating.

“Put your camera here son, then you can get the corner routine in the background.”

It was only long after we’d beaten Bolton that I remembered that media day, and then thought about first goal at Wembley. Surely they didn’t…

Nick Wright wheels away to celebrate 'that' goal in the Play-Off final (Image: Watford Observer)

Once we’d had the media day the remaining time before the trip to Wembley was then ‘behind closed doors’. Or so we thought.

I spent my days at West Herts when training was taking place, as it was easier to be where Graham, his staff and the players were.

One morning the players had just gone out for a warm-up and were doing laps around the edge of the field. I was in the clubhouse when I could hear commotion outside.

I got out onto the grass to see two scantily-clad ‘models’ doing their best to chase with the players while a photographer was busily snapping away. It was, for those old enough to remember, a very Benny Hill-esque scene.

GT was already on his way to the photographer and when I caught him up he was forcibly explaining to him – in agricultural language – that he wanted the film out of his camera.

By now the players had stopped running to look at what was going on, and the two girls had caught them up, whereupon Kenny Jackett and others were trying to cover them up with tracksuit tops and steer them away.

The three of them had been sent by the notoriously sleezy Daily Sport.

The photographer obviously wasn’t keen to lose his film, and probably his fee, but GT was quite persuasive and once he had his hands on the roll of Kodak (no digital photography in 1999!) he told the snapper to sling his hook, and take the girls with him.

It was the first ‘sting’ by the media I’d ever seen in person, and it taught me just how low the tabloid press would go in order to get what they thought would sell papers.