New Zealand boss Bazeley recalls his Watford career and departure

Having joined Watford as a 14-year-old when Graham Taylor was still in his first spell as manager, Darren Bazeley spent the next 14 years on a yellow, red and black rollercoaster that fans old enough to remember will doubtless recall.

Bazeley enjoyed some very good times, but to get there he – like the rest of us – had to watch the club drop out of the top tier, then miss out on an immediate return via the play-offs before spending too many seasons nervously looking over shoulders at the bottom rather being concerned with life at the top of the table.

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Having made his debut on the final day of the 1989/90 season, Bazeley was not involved in a team that finished any higher than seventh in the second tier for the next seven seasons.

“When I first started playing as an apprentice the club had just come off a good spell, and when I signed pro we went through some pretty lean years. It was tough,” recalled Bazeley, who was recently appointed manager of the New Zealand national team.

“We went through a lot of managers: Glenn Roeder, Steve Perryman, Colin Lee was in charge when I started.

“That was a sort of seven-year period where we had different managers and then we got relegated.”

That was the end of the 1995/96 season when the Hornets dropped into League One after losing 1-0 at home to Leicester City on the final day of the season.

By then, Graham Taylor had returned and, although he couldn’t keep the Hornets up, he was to oversee the best times of Bazeley’s Watford career.

“When Graham came back he galvanised the whole club. He worked with Kenny Jackett and Luther Blissett to form this management team which was so successful,” said Bazeley.

“The 97/98 season when we won League One was memorable and really good. We had great players who made a great team. I missed a bit of that through a knee injury but I still managed to play a big part in it.”

Bazeley was recently appointed head coach of New Zealand (Image: Darren Bazeley)

Bazeley then made 43 appearances and chipped in with a couple of goals as Watford secured promotion to the Premier League for the first time in the 1998/99 season.

“The promotion the following season was unexpected, but as players we did feel something special was happening,” he said.

“When I try to explain it to people it’s hard: the team spirit that Graham put into us, and the belief, along with the hard work, it was different.

“We had no star names, but when you looked down the squad we were a group of players who had already formed a bond.

“Robert Page, Steve Palmer, Alec Chamberlain, Richard Johnson, Paul Robinson, myself – we’d played together for a long time.

“We grew up together a lot of us, playing in the same youth teams and worked our way through the ranks. We had a connection and team spirit that came from being together a long time, and then you added in Tommy Mooney, Peter Kennedy, Micah Hyde and others to give us a real core group.

“Graham added little bits to that but the team spirit and the hard work ethic he wanted was something we had anyway. We were never out of games because we were always prepared to fight.

“The Championship is hard. It’s a tough slog. You play lots of games, and it’s often Saturday/Tuesday/Saturday/Tuesday.

“We were a team that just always turned up. We didn’t really have off days. We just worked hard for each other and the rewards started to come.

“But it probably wasn’t until the last 10 games of the season that it really started to click. We won seven of the last eight games. I’d been at the club when we were in a losing habit, but then we had a winning habit and we were on a roll.

“We didn’t change anything, we just worked hard and stuck together as a unit.

“Graham was the best man-manager that I’ve ever worked with. He was so good at knowing his players and how to get the best out of each of them.”

Bazeley is very aware that the morals and ethos Taylor gave his players lives on – he is part of the Former Players’ Club, created by Luther Blissett, and stays in touch with them from the other side of the world.

“There is a WhatsApp group and we all chat and keep up to date,” Bazeley explained.

“When I was given the job managing New Zealand, Gary Porter put a message in the group and then I was getting loads of messages of congratulations – not just from players I’d played with but players who were at Watford before my time but who had played for Graham.

“I had messages from John Barnes and Gerry Armstrong for example, two great players, who left Watford before I played. But being a Watford player truly makes you part of a family, and that is another legacy of Graham Taylor and the way he worked.”

As with many other former players who were part of the 98/99 season, Bazeley said when they reached the play-offs they were convinced promotion would happen.

“Once we’d got to the play-offs we just felt it was meant to be,” he said.

“We probably should have beaten Birmingham by more than 1-0 in the semi-final home leg, and then even when we conceded early in the second leg it was weird because we felt that we could still do it by sticking together.

“Then Dave Holdsworth got sent off, and once it got to penalties I never felt us winning was ever in doubt.”

The players had taken penalties – complete with the walk from the halfway line – at the end of every training session leading up to that game at St Andrews.

“We had been so drilled in taking penalties, doing it every day after training, we were all full of confidence,” Bazley explained.

“When I was coaching New Zealand Under-20s at the World Cup recently, we did exactly the same thing ahead of a knock-out game. I’d remembered the confidence I felt as a result of doing that and I talked to my players about it.

“That night at Birmingham, I knew exactly what I was going to do from the halfway line to the moment I took the penalty. It’s a long walk in that moment, from the halfway line to the penalty spot. Do you walk, do you run, do you jog? What do you do when you pick the ball up? How are you going to place it? What’s your run-up?

“But we had been working on all those things for days. I knew my routine. I knew where I was putting my penalty. I wasn’t nervous at all.

“I wasn’t the biggest goalscorer in the world but at that moment, I felt fully confident I was going to score.”

Celebrating at Wembley. (Image: Action Images)

Fast forward to the final, and fans will always talk about the two goals with warm memories.

However, wind the action back to 30 seconds before Nick Wright’s sensational opener, and you’ll see a dazzling piece of skill from Bazeley.

“Yeah, I remember that – I’ve watched it a couple of times! It’s weird, because when I have watched it I keep asking myself why I didn’t take a shot,” he said.

“It was a really good move, Johnno knocks it out to me and I start a little dribble and then there are two defenders. I sort of go inside and outside, past Ricardo Gardner and I nutmegged Robbie Elliott in the process.

“But then when I’m past both of them and I’m in the box, for some reason I take my touch wide rather than towards goal. That would have allowed me to have a shot – but like I said, so much about the end to that season was meant to be.

“I put in a pretty poor cross, but that won the corner which Peter Kennedy sent over and Nick Wright scored the overhead. So I sort of claim an assist!”

Having played his part in getting Watford to the Premier League, Bazeley left later that summer, surprising fans and pundits alike by dropping back down into the Championship to join Wolves.

That meant he missed a chance to play for the Hornets in the top-flight, and he didn’t reach the Premier League with Wolves either. Did that lead to regrets?

“No, I’m not like that. I don’t believe you should ever regret things. I knew it was a big decision and I took a long time to make it,” he said.

“I talked to a lot of people, including Graham: we did a lot of talking.

“It was just the right time. It was really difficult to leave having just secured promotion to the Premier League, and the hard thing was that I’d been at the club for so long and now there was the offer of a long contract in front of me.

“The contract wasn’t the issue: it was a really good contract. It was more that if I signed it I would probably stay at Watford for forever, and I’d never experience what it’s like to move club.

“I was looking to stay. We’d just been promoted and we were in the process of buying a new house, and we’d had just had a baby. All the signs were we would stay.”

The first link in the chain of the move to the Midlands came via the man who had given him his professional debut at Vicarage Road.

“My agent had been talking to clubs but I wasn’t really that bothered because we’d been promoted,” Bazeley recalled.

“Then Colin Lee, who was manager of Wolves and had given me my debut when he managed Watford, rang me.

“I remember saying to him that I’d just got promoted and was in talks with Watford, and he said just come and have a chat, see the stadium, and have a coffee.

“Out of respect, I said I’d do that. And when I did, it just pretty much blew me away: the club, the people, the stadium.

“It snowballed from there. I wasn’t thinking of leaving but that suddenly opened my eyes. I spoke to a lot of people. I’m really close to Gary Porter and Nigel Gibbs, and I talked to them – they said they’d had similar opportunities to leave but didn’t, but also then wondered what it would have been like.

“I was at Watford from when I was 14, so it had been almost half my life. If I had signed the contract I would have been there until I was 32. That would have been me staying at the club forever.

“Something inside me did want to experience moving club, and Wolves was a big club. And it was a big contract too, I won’t lie.

“Watford were offering us contracts that weren’t Premier League contracts, but also had a clause in them that meant you went back to Championship contracts if you got relegated.

“Wolves were offering me a four-year contract that was way better than the Watford contract.”

Bazeley in action for Wolves against Tommy Mooney of Watford. (Image: Action Images)

Little did Bazeley know that his arrival at Molineux would occur just before two key departures.

“When I joined Wolves we had Steve Bull and Robbie Keane up front, and they’d signed me and Andy Sinton. Us two were going to provide the crosses for Bull and Keane,” he said.

“Then Steve Bull announced his retirement in pre-season, and Robbie Keane was sold to Coventry for £6m two games into the season.

“So that team got dismantled a little bit, but we still had a good side and I never thought that when I left Watford it would be my last chance to play in the Premier League.

“I always thought Wolves were a big club with big players that was going places. I believed I’d end up playing in the Premier League with them at some stage. But it didn’t work out that way.

“Of course I watched Watford and thought ‘what if’. All my mates were there, and I was a Watford supporter, and I still am today.

“Watford is a great club, it’s a big part of my life. I have their shirt on my wall in my office at home.

“It’s a very special club that gave me very special memories.”

It’s not just the football club that the converted Kiwi remembers with fondness when he talks about Watford – it’s the hospital next door too.

“Both my daughters were born at Watford General, next to the stadium,” Bazeley said, before sharing an anecdote he said he can’t remember telling many people before.

“The last game of the regular season in 1998/99 was home to Grimsby, and we had to win to be certain of getting in the play-offs – and my wife was heavily pregnant.

“Graham took us to the Hilton overnight before that game. I think that was the first time ever we’d stayed in a hotel overnight before a home game.

“I was in the hotel, rooming with Steve Palmer. We were watching Match of the Day and it was about 11pm, and my wife Sandy rang me to say her waters had broken.

“We lived in Garston and so the hotel wasn’t too far away. So I wrote Graham a letter and said what had happened, and that I’d be back in the morning, don’t worry. And I slid it under his door.

“I picked Sandy up, took her to the hospital and I think she had our daughter Abbie between 3am and 4am. I stayed for a couple of hours, drove back to the hotel and wrote Graham another letter at about 6am, and said she’d had the baby, everything was fine and I was all good to play.

“When we got up for breakfast he congratulated me and checked I was okay, and I said I had no problems at all.

“Of course we won that game and it was a great day, and obviously while I was playing Sandy and Abbie were next door in the hospital!”

The Bazeleys already had a daughter by then, and her name was the cause of some training ground banter.

“My elder daughter is called Tayla, and I got a fair bit of stick for that!” he laughed.

“The name came from Trevor Putney, who I played with at Watford.

“He had a daughter called Tayla and the name just stuck with me and Sandy, we thought it was a really cool name. That was where we first heard it.

“But when I went into training and told the other lads the name I got slashed. Graham presumed she was named after him, and always said if I had a boy I’d have to call him Graham.”

Playing for Watford against QPR. (Image: Action Images)

Having worked at Watford in those heady days of promotion and Premier League, I got to know the squad very well and helped them with the media demands that the top-flight brought with it.

However, when Watford played at Tottenham in the FA Cup Third Round in January 1999, I couldn’t help Bazeley avoid a very swift lesson in media management.

“It was a big game, and at that time David Ginola was awesome for Spurs, and I knew it was going to be a real challenge to play against him,” he said.

“I remember we scored in the first minute that day and played quite well, but we were 4-2 down by half-time and ended up losing 5-2.

“I was marking Ginola and he was so good that day. After the game I was just trying to get onto the bus, and I was caught by a group of journalists and one of them said: “Ginola can make you look a right t*** can’t he?”

“I agreed and said “Yeah”. And that was the headline the next day: “Ginola made me look a t***!

“They turned it into I said it. I just agreed. Best bit of media training ever, seeing those headlines!

“I learned a good lesson from that and I tell players now you have to be careful. If you agree to something it can be written as if you said it.”

Taylor had actually asked me to shepherd the players onto the bus and try to avoid any media interviews, so I got a call the next day to ask how the headline had materialised.

“So I got you into trouble eh?” said Bazeley. “Ah, there was a silver lining then!”

• Darren Bazeley was recently appointed head coach of the New Zealand men’s national team, and he will be bringing his squad to play Australia at an unconfirmed London venue on Tuesday October 17.

The game has been dubbed the ‘football ashes’, with the two nations playing to win the rediscovered New Zealand and Australia Soccer Ashes Trophy – a unique artefact of both nation’s shared sporting and military history, it was crafted in 1923 and for 30 years served as the prize for international ‘tests’ between Australia and New Zealand.

The trophy is a powerful symbol of Australian and New Zealand men’s national teams' early years, containing the ashes of cigars smoked by the team’s first captains, Alex Gibb and George Campbell, housed in a safety razor case that was carried at Gallipoli.