It's summer 1977. Watford are languishing in English football's Fourth Division but they have a wealthy, flamboyant and famous owner who has dreams of taking them to the top. The rock star, Elton John, has only recently taken full control but he's a novice when it comes to running a football club.

Elton's vision is to appoint England's World Cup-winning captain Bobby Moore as manager, but Watford's directors have other ideas and set about persuading the chairman to go for someone who knows what the lower divisions are all about. It takes an intervention from the legendary Don Revie to change the course of the club's history.

The club the new manager inherits is a shambles. Greyhound racing takes priority over football at Vicarage Road. But the goal is clear, to reach the First Division in ten years...

Enjoy the game by Lionel Birnie. Read by Colin Mace. Produced by Jon Moonie.

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'You’re going to work harder than you’ve ever worked before' – Graham Taylor

In the summer of 1977, after two consecutive seasons stuck in the Fourth Division, Watford had a new manager. Graham Taylor had led Lincoln City out of the bottom division with a record-breaking points total and he swept into Vicarage Road determined to change the culture and drive up standards. His first job was to meet each of the players, look in the whites of their eyes and assess whether they had what it would take to embrace his methods. Taylor's impact was more or less immediate...

Enjoy the game by Lionel Birnie. Read by Colin Mace. Produced by Jon Moonie.

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Graham Taylor appoints a veteran, Double-winning manager as his assistant in the clearest sign yet that Watford were going places. With an emphasis on fast, attacking football and a desire to outscore the opposition home and away, Taylor's methods have an immediate effect as they win the Fourth Division title and then pass straight through the Third Division to reach the second tier for the first time in almost a decade.

Enjoy the game by Lionel Birnie. Read by Colin Mace. Produced by Jon Moonie.

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I knew I had to change something or it was the end of the dream - Graham Taylor

Watford made it to the Second Division just two years into Elton and Graham's ten-year plan, but life was not easy rubbing shoulders with the likes of Chelsea, Sunderland and West Ham United.

Taylor was determined to give the players who had steered the club to successive promotions a chance at the highest level but after an early-season defeat at Stamford Bridge he realised he had to change something. Watford's direct football had already attracted attention, and criticism. Conventional wisdom said that it would not work in the higher divisions and Taylor felt the pressure to conform. The Hornets survived relegation but the goals had dried up and Taylor felt he had compromised his principles. It was time to go back to basics.

Enjoy the game by Lionel Birnie. Read by Colin Mace. Produced by Jon Moonie.

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'If you didn’t want a clip round the ear, don’t cross Tom Walley'

Meet Sergeant Major Tom Walley, the man who built Watford’s youth system and turned boys into men.

When Graham Taylor arrived at Watford there was no youth system to speak of. Their were barely enough young players to put out a side. Taylor knew that if Watford were to compete in the top divisions they needed to identify and develop their own young players.

Tom Walley was a Hornets favourite – a veteran of Ken Furphy's team that reached the Second Division the first time round – but his knees had gone and his playing days were coming to an end.

When Taylor met Walley for the first time he spotted something in the Welshman and put him in charge of revolutionising the youth set-up. Walley's combination of carrot and stick, his ability to identify talent and teach them what it would take to make it as a professional, paid dividends many times over as Watford earned a reputation for a progressive approach to developing young players.

Enjoy the game by Lionel Birnie. Read by Colin Mace. Produced by Jon Moonie.

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'My biggest regret is using his phrase in interviews' – Graham Taylor

What’s the difference between a long ball and a long pass? It's a question that came to characterise the media's coverage of Graham Taylor's Watford team.

In 1979, as Taylor was reflecting on the compromises he'd made on arriving in the Second Division, a statistician called Charles Reep wrote to him with a detailed breakdown of the numbers that led to success on the football pitch.

Reep, who had been a wing commander in the Royal Air Force, had analysed hundreds of matches and had identified some key statistical truths about the game. One was that the great majority of goals were scored from moves consisting of three passes or fewer. Reep's methods had been instrumental in the success of the great Wolverhampton Wanderers side of the 1950s.

But how did he come to work with Graham Taylor and what effect did his ideas have on Watford's success as they looked to push on and achieve promotion to the First Division?

Enjoy the game by Lionel Birnie. Read by Colin Mace. Produced by Jon Moonie.

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The Southampton players just wanted to get out of there

The Hornets complete a stunning League Cup comeback in September 1980, hitting seven past Southampton at Vicarage Road having trailed 4-0 from the first leg of the tie.

It was the first result that really made people in English football sit up and take notice of what was going on at Watford. Graham Taylor would not have said publicly beforehand that he thought the comeback was on, he instilled a sense in his team that they could achieve the seemingly impossible.

Enjoy the game by Lionel Birnie. Read by Colin Mace. Produced by Jon Moonie.

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‘He wanted to play with two wingers and attack. I thought, I love this guy.’

Graham Taylor goes shopping again, spending a significant amount of Elton John's investment on a player from each of the North London giants and a much less heralded arrival from Oxford United.

Two men from Northern Ireland were key to Watford's plans to push for promotion. Pat Rice had been Bertie Mee's captain at Arsenal. Gerry Armstrong was an eye-catching striker at Tottenham Hotspur. They were joined by Les Taylor, a hard-working midfielder from Third Division Oxford, and once they had settled in, Watford began to look like a team that was going places.

Enjoy the game by Lionel Birnie. Read by Colin Mace. Produced by Jon Moonie.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.