In the back of the Net by Oliver Phillips

IN THE beginning there were just a few friends and relatives, going along to see Henry Grover and company play football in Cassiobury Park.

News of the game was spread by word of mouth but, as regular, friendly fixtures became established, posters were used.

Who knows, they may even have resorted to the town crier but it was not long before the Watford Observer showed an increasing interest in publishing details of matches played and fixtures mooted.

So, if we were not in at the foundation, we were involved in the very early days, particularly as one of the early players and subsequently chairman of the club, was C H Peacock, whose family were the publishers of the newspaper.

Football began to take on a national significance and two Fleet Street news agencies were keen to beam the details of Southern League matches around the country. They were the Press Association and the Exchange Telegraph, and while the former absorbed the latter in the late 1980's, the long-established association with Watford continues.

There are no longer any London Saturday football papers, such as The Star, Evening Standard and Evening News. They too used to cover Watford, but more often or not they would tend to employ the local man to ring details through.

So a succession of Watford Observer sports reporters used to augment their income by phoning through the half-time and full-time results to the news agencies and providing copy to the evenings.

Because the London evening newspapers used to hit the streets soon after the final whistle, the bulk of the reports used to deal with the first half, with only a paragraph or so and sketchy scoring details from the second half.

I frequently had to conjure 100 words on the first 20 minutes of a Watford match, no matter how dull that period was and no matter how many goals were scored after the interval, so I never thought those reports were either edifying to undertake or to read.

Yet that was the way it was done for decades.

Similarly, other evening papers, who covered the opposition, would ring through with an order and, on the afternoon of the match, they would ring the Press box at specified times, and you would dictate copy down the line for publication in Hartlepool, Liverpool, Hull or wherever.

Very occasionally, there would be a second-half radio broadcast from the ground, but, as the years moved on, the coverage of Watford FC was mainly undertaken by the Watford Observer and the West Herts Post, and their reporters, augmenting their income, passed on the information to news agencies and daily or evening newspapers.

After the Saturday matches, there would be a need to provide Sunday newspapers with a report and often this was again undertaken by a local journalist. Similarly, Monday's national newspapers would require a follow-up report with quotes on the match, and again the local man or agency would undertake this.

When I first started as a cub reporter, I would have to read my boss's hastily-written copy down the phone, trying to explain such things as "a Crisp pass" took a capital 'c' because the player was Ron Crisp.

Then came the Evening Echo to upset the monopoly shared by the Post and Observer. They had the advantage of being on the streets every night and the Sports Echo tabloid every Saturday night.

It was quite a challenge for weekly journalists such as myself but somehow the Echo never quite caught on and eventually emerged becoming the Post-Echo, covering an improbably large and unwieldy area from Bedford to Chesham.

There had already been early signs of the trend towards free newspapers and the Watford Observer brought out the Mid-Week Observer on Tuesday's, which later begat the Thursday Free Observer.

The reduction in advertising revenue eventually caused the West Herts Post to fold in 1970 and, while free newspapers began to make their first appearance in the town, the Post-Echo eventually closed in 1983.

But there were other media outlets. Local radio had commenced with Chiltern making their first broadcast, covering Watford's match at Cambridge in 1981. They continued to cover the Hornets home and away until 1995, and Radio Bedford (now Three Counties) was another outlet. I contributed to both stations over the years, although more particularly Chiltern as a freelance on match days.

Towards the end of the 1980's, there was a mushrooming of free newspapers - one even sponsored the club - but before long the majority had left town.

Another increasingly popular innovation was The Text on TV and while these provided news, the improvement in desktop publishing options spawned another vehicle for opinons, the fanzine.

Now there was a time when Watford FC used to play football, and the Watford Observer used to report on it. The club had its programme, which we printed for the majority of 70-odd years, and also published a pre-season handbook, although we did take a major share of the responsibility for the latter for 56 years.

Then came the introduction of The Hornet Hotline and the quarterly Supporter Magazine, so Watford were not just playing matches, but writing and talking about them as well.

Yet, despite the decline in provincial newspapers and the fact that many went to the wall in the recession eight years back, the Watford Observer is still putting on circulation.

We are, in essence, holding our own, but what's this? . . . a new source of information and an area for debate has emerged, the Internet.

Next came the Watford Mailing List and that entire side of things has accelerated.

For reasons far beyond my control, the launch of the Watford Observer web-site has been delayed until now. I actually wrote my first contribution for the site, last May but it was not used.

Never one to throw away the odd 1,000 words, I eventually used it in the newspaper.

I thought that somewhat ironic, as I read that I was supposed to be negative to the Internet.

Since then, Watford FC have launched their own web-site and the Watford Mailing List has grown. Now we have our own web-site, so once again there is an increase in the number and methods of disseminating and events and activities of Watford FC.

Faxes, fanzines, mailing lists, web-sites, radio stations, hotlines, phone-ins, tv texts, newsagencies, club publications, poster advertising,national newspapers, free sheets (free newspapers) and still the Watford Observer. The options are growing and only the town crier seems to have gone a trifle quie over the last 100 years or so.

As I wrote the other week, I see no reason why all of these cannot co-exist happily together, providing mutual benefit, interest and enjoyment.

If we are to be a paper of record, then we have to keep abreast of such developments,

so, now I read the List every day. For the record, I find it interesting because I am able to click in and read it when I want to. I have always regarded it as essential to my job to keep in touch with the grass-roots thinking.

Perusing the List is an extension of what I used to do years back. When the reserves played, I used to pop down and watch them, deploying an assistant to cover the match while I joined the fans in the old Main Stand enclosure in front of the directors' box.

Now I will be writing a regular contribution, not usually as long as this, but one exclusively to the Internet. However, I would hopefully like this to be a two-way thing.

I cannot possibly spend time e-mailing opinions and answers to individual fans, but if you have any questions to ask on coverage, approach or whether I am a reactionary bigot, and if so what am I going to doabout it, etc, then send them through and I'll attempt to deal with them through this column.

You can e-mail me on: news@WatfordObserver.co.uk

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.