So the eyes of the world (and the news media) turned to Watford today - that doesn't happen every day.
I am sure you are as interested as I am in what went on, so here is a quick summary.
Watford versus Coventry City at Vicarage Road stadium...
You may think with the long win-less run Watford are on at the moment that Aidy Boothroyd, and the powers that be at the club, may be panicking a bit - but not a bit of it.
It was therefore completely coincidental that with public support on the terraces beginning to ebb away as quickly as confidence on the pitch that the club invested in thousands of yellow Watford flags to be draped over the fans seats when they came in.
It was also a risky gesture. Yes, a victory and the fans would wave them joyously in the air singing the team's praises, but a defeat would surely have seen fans telling the club exactly where they could stick their flags!
The flags themselves gave a rather interesting message - aside from the one about the board panicking about the fans losing the faith with project Boothroyd - emblazoned with the phrase "Who are we? Watford". Given the poor run of late, and the awful nature of the fare being served up "Why are we Watford?" may have been more apt.
Self belief is something that Aidy has in abundance. He probably just thought that the fans needed a little shoring up ahead of the game against such a strong opposition, languishing as they are just above the Championship relegation zone. And therefore we didn't just have the flags, we had Harry the 8ft Hornet mascot striking a penalty into the (empty) net at the Rookery end before performing a carefully executed slide in the mud towards the advertising hoardings before running in amongst the fans on the terraces.
At that point I thought Harry may have ripped his oversized furry head off to reveal he was Aidy, but no such luck.
Still the "entertainment" continued. A man with an air powered bazooka started firing Watford t-shirts into the crowd. The words "health" and "safety" flashed large in my mind. Could you imagine someone being struck with one of these and then suing the club for a few thousand pound in the courts for the strain, injury and stress caused by such an incident.
If Danny Webber had still been at the club, the injury prone striker probably would have got injured and missed the rest of the season just by looking at the man firing a bazooka!
The crowd looked on rather bemused. The problem hasn't been with the affable nature of the manager and his players, rather the poor performances on the pitch and a lack of decent results (meaning a lack of points). In fact Aidy may well have been better served by sticking Jordan Stewart, Nathan Ellington or Steve Kabba into a bazooka and firing them into the hands of the waiting fans - that would have pleased far more people, and would have been cheaper to do as a simple good will gesture.
With the flags, the performing mascot and the t-shirt firing bazooka, I did wonder at this point whether we were going to go the whole hog and have unicycling jugglers at half time - but fortunately this was not necessary as by this point Watford had taken the lead through Ellington's mis-hit 25 yard effort that pee-rolled into the net in slow motion.
However even Watford players seemed unable to believe that they might actually win a game, and in the second half a rather toothless Coventry were allowed to draw level. In fact they had numerous chances to win the game - one particularly gilt-edged chance 10 mins from time, that proved costly as Watford retrieved the ball and went up the other end, waited for a defender to completely miss the ball and Tommy Smith ran in a flukey winner.
Boothroyd must have sighed in relief. Otherwise you feel the bill for pre-match entertainment at the Barnsley game in midweek could be astronomical! However the important thing is the long win-less run is over and tomorrow is a new day.
Oh yes, in other less important news a bunch of world leaders - including the Prime Minister - were speaking at a conference at The Grove in Watford. However I don't think any of them managed to make it to the game.
I bet they are kicking themselves for missing out on a free flag/t-shirt!
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