1984: Watford v Everton goalfests

If you wanted full value for money from your football in the 1983/84 season, then a season ticket at Watford would have been a wise choice. The strike partnership of Mo Johnston and George Reilly, ably supported by the skilful wide men John Barnes and Nigel Callaghan, were providing the excitement from an attacking perspective. However, defending seemed an afterthought at times.

For a while it appeared as if the club had contracted a serious bout of second season syndrome. They may have finished second in 1982/83 but by December, Graham Taylor's team were in the relegation zone with just four league wins. Yet everything would change in 1984.

A run of 32 points from a possible 39 pushed Watford up to 8th place and the goals were flowing at both ends of the pitch. After Everton's trip to Vicarage Road in February 1984, Watford were the top scorers in Division One, but only the bottom two of Notts County and Wolves had conceded more.

The match against Everton was a demonstration of the thrills and spills you could expect from Watford fixtures at the start of 1984. Taylor's team had recently won 5-3 at Notts County and 4-2 at West Ham, and had also progressed to the FA Cup quarter finals. 

Howard Kendall's Everton were also experiencing an upturn in results, which was just as well seeing as the manager appeared on the brink of being forced out after Christmas 1983. Unbeaten in the league in 1984, Everton had reached the Milk Cup final and were also into the last eight of the FA Cup.

For large periods of the league match on February 25, 1984, it seemed as if Everton would suffer their first league defeat in the calendar year. Twice Watford held two goal leads, but Everton's battling qualities and the home team's generosity saw the points shared in an eight-goal thriller.

A Barnes header gave Watford the half-time lead, before a crazy second half. Graeme Sharp equalised in the 51st minute, but goals from Johnston (56) and Barnes (64) gave Watford breathing space. Andy Gray (67) responded only for Wilf Rostron (75) to restore the two-goal cushion. With ten minutes remaining, Watford looked like chalking up another high scoring win.

Yet Watford really weren't built for shutting up shop. Sharp (80) set up a frantic finish, and when Adrian Heath equalised in injury time, Taylor understandably cut a frustrated figure. "We didn't defend particularly well in the penalty box but then again we don't," he said in a resigned manner. Everton, who had only scored ten goals away from home in the league, were grateful for Watford's frailties.

The Guardian's Robert Armstrong described the 4-4 draw as "a bizarre contest littered with more banana skins than a Laurel and Hardy movie". But come the autumn of 1984 the two teams would return for a sequel that was just as mad. The 1984 FA Cup final was boring in comparison, although many Evertonians would disagree.

Again Watford started another season poorly, winless in their first seven matches of the 1984/85 campaign. Everton hoping to build on their FA Cup success stuttered to two defeats in their opening two league matches but were gradually turning the corner. They would leave with three points on September 29, but it would be another dramatic afternoon in Hertfordshire.

As debuts go, Tony Coton's could have gone better. He was not to blame for any of the goals, if anything he helped to keep the score down. But Watford's new keeper knew he had a challenge ahead of him. As the Guardian's Bob Houston noted, "the introduction of Coton is a £300,000 footballing equivalent of tackling cracks in a dam with a tub of Polyfilla."

Reilly bundled in the opening goal, yet from this point on it was a case of how many goals Watford would gift wrap for the visitors. "You cannot legislate for schoolboy errors," Taylor later revealed. "It isn't even a question of pushing forward and leaving ourselves open at the back. We are just defending in a way that I can't believe - but I have to believe it because I'm watching it."

 

 

 Everton's equaliser via Trevor Steven involved a lovely flick from Heath, but Watford shot themselves in the foot twice before the break. Mistakes from Kenny Jackett and David Bardsley saw Heath benefit both times, as Taylor continued to pull his hair out.

There would only be six goals in the second half this time. Everton centre back Derek Mountfield headed past Neville Southall to get Watford back into the match, yet six minutes later he would score at the right end to put Everton 4-2 up. The drama kept on coming, with Callaghan reducing the deficit in the 70th minute and Gary Stevens clearing a John Barnes effort off the line shortly after.

Stevens' intervention proved crucial when Rostron misjudged a Southall kick to allow Sharp to seemingly put the game to bed. Yet Barnes scored with three minutes remaining and an incident packed half was complete when Everton substitute Terry Curran was sent off for swearing at a linesman.

Writing in his autobiography There To Be Shot At, Coton recalls his debut. "I'm not exaggerating when I say this was a baptism of fire that would have made Red Adair wince. It was like a Harlem Globetrotters basketball game, with thrills, spills, saves and near-misses." Both Coton and Southall were commended for keeping the score down.

"It's a different game when you play Watford," Kendall said after the 5-4 win. "They've got a giant up front, a sniffer alongside him and two players out wide with quality. There are not many teams in the league who have got that." 

The Guardian's David Lacey highlighted the issues facing Watford. "They have been prepared to take risks for the sake of entertainment but when they have fallen some of the results have been extremely messy." Yet as Taylor guided Watford to a mid-table finish come the end of the season, it was hard not to have admiration for his approach.

Although Everton would go on to concede four goals against Norwich and Chelsea before the end of the year, defensively the team tightened up and the title would return to Goodison Park after an absence of 15 years. They would later lose 4-1 at Coventry, but the championship was wrapped up by then and the players were in no fit state to perform.

There cannot be many teams that have won the title and conceded four goals in five separate matches. But at least one of these occurred in a fixture that Everton actually won. Watford must have been sick of the sight of Kendall's team in 1984. Not only did they lose the FA Cup final, but they also scored four times in two matches at Vicarage Road and still failed to beat Everton. I guess that's why they call it the blues.