WELCOME to this factual and statistical record of the entire history of Watford Football Club.
This website was the work of the late, great Trefor Jones, whose two books – The Watford Football Club Illustrated Who’s Who and Watford Season by Season – formed a remarkable and definitive record of the club’s history, documenting every player who’d made a first team appearance and the details of every fixture respectively. All of that information was transferred by Trefor onto the original version of this site, which we’ve kept online for posterity.
Trefor sadly passed away in June 2019. The website was inherited by Matt Rowson, Steve Brown and Ian Grant with his blessing. Since then, we’ve been working to adapt the site, with the aim both of making it easier to update regularly and of making the information more accessible to those who want to search and browse it all.
That work has involved extracting the information from Trefor’s PDF documents in order to put into a database. To do this, we’ve used extensive development undertaken by Ian in his role as Technical Director at CommunitySites, who have also given it all a smart new look. We’ve been greatly assisted by Nicholas Ralph, whose comprehensive fixture spreadsheets have enabled us to finish about a year earlier than we otherwise would have. We’re also grateful for the support and patience of Richard Walker and Dave Messenger at Watford Football Club.
We’re now proud to present the new version of the Watford FC Archive. As before, it contains extensive details of each season from 1881/82 to 2021/22, inclusive, including line-ups; a biographical and career account of every player who has appeared in a competitive first-team match; coverage of all the managers; and a feature on each opposing club which includes the results of every meeting.
Those details can now be searched in all kinds of mind-bending ways. Want a list of every manager who’s taken charge of the club in the fourth tier? How about every player who appeared for us in the Anglo-Italian Cup and also made league appearances for Bradford City? Or every season in which we played in the Full Members’ Cup? Or every time Troy Deeney was used as a substitute on a Wednesday? It’s all there, and more. A lot more.
For the moment there will be one large update per year, in the close season. All data is up to date now as of June 30th 2022.
Queries or information relating to the website can be sent via the ‘Contact’ section. In particular, information is extremely welcome from anyone who can supply essential details which are lacking in the ‘Players’ pages. This applies especially to any missing birth or death dates, full names, photographs, etc, of local men and others who represented the club in its early years. Such assistance will be gratefully received. There’s also a form for sending us specific corrections if you spot anything that’s incorrect.