So Sunday we were at home to
Keynsham Town, 3 pm kick-off. I live in Leighton Buzzard, so at 12.15, the kids and I, Nathan and Lindsay jumped in the car for the journey to Kings Langley. A nice smooth drive with no traffic for a change and plenty of Watford songs sung on the way!
We arrived at 12.50 pm and was immediately greeted by the fantastic Charlie, with a man hug and fist bumps! Charlie’s a great character, he suffers from Autism, now a man, he’s one of the kindest, loveliest of lads and all the team love him. Then a hello to Grace, the GM of
Watford Ladies and Sam, Charlie’s Mum and a volunteer. A brief catch up, involving showing my scars, due to surgery which meant I had missed the last 3 home game. I noticed there was no Paul, Charlie’s Dad and volunteer (the voice of Watford Ladies), turns out he had shown up with no cash, so had gone to the nearest cashpoint, always something with him, he turned up late for MK Dons away last year as he had forgotten to put the clocks forward! He’s also known as Steps, as he’s always falling down them!
The kids went off to play some football in the adjacent pitch. Another good thing as they can go play and keep themselves occupied whilst doing duties or watching the game.
Helen Rolandsen showed up with trays of cakes, I helped her get them from the car along with Luke, another volunteer and we helped set up a free help yourself cake stall.
The game was the closest matchday to Remembrance Sunday so at 1.30 pm Mr Sweets Suren and Richard showed up to help collect some money with the buckets and sold some Watford Poppy badges.
One of the jobs us volunteers do is help sort out the car park and welcome the opposition players and the officials. Keynsham turned up very late, almost quarter past 2, apparently the M4 had been closed off, meaning taking a different route. So I quickly escorted them to the changing rooms so I could do my next job.
Harry The Hornet was in town today, Sam jumped in the suit so I took over from her on the turnstile. I quite enjoy it in there, you get an opportunity to talk to a lot of fans, old and new. Lindsay joined me in the hut, she loves handing out the programmes and pushing the pedal to let fans through.
As mentioned earlier it was our day to show remembrance, so there was a minutes silence, with the last post played, teams were led out by British Legion flag bearers and there was a poppy reef. Big shout out to Steps for sorting that out.
The Golden Girls were lead out by the mascots, mainly some Kings Langley Girls players and a couple of young girls from the crowd.
About 15 mins into the 1st half I gave up on the turnstile, I could see the game from the position, but it looked like no one else was coming in, so time to watch some action, 5 minutes later we decided to walk around and hand out some cake, to me, the kids, Luke and Mark AKA Moobsie, also a volunteer walked around handing the fantastic cakes out, which brought a lot of smiles out of a lot of fans.
The 1st half itself was a tough half, Watford looked the better side and took the lead through
Adekite Fatuga-Dada after some good work from the skipper,
Helen Ward, on the right, squaring it for an easy finish. There was a second goal shortly after, a 1st Watford goal for
Ryah Vyse, a similar goal to the 1st but this time Ade was the provider. The Golden Girls went into the break with a well deserved 2-0 lead.
Onto half time, one of my favourite parts of a match day. Me and Harry The Hornet get the mascots on the pitch for some penalties. Harry had been told not to get his boots dirty so I had to go between the sticks this week. Loads of fun and loads of happy faces.
Onto the 2nd half, the new Watford Ladies Ultras were a little quiet today, so I popped down to get some noise going. It was a good laugh down there with some good banter, the chant of the day was “There’s only one Jack Whitehall” aimed at lookalike Danny Hyman.
Watford were rampant in the 2nd half with 5 goals.
Andrea Carid made it 3-0, with a nice finish.