They’ve been involved in nearly every home game for many seasons, but chances are you’ve never heard of them.

They give the same performance every time, they’ve never scored a goal and yet you can’t blame them for the poor form at Vicarage Road.

I’m talking about Technocat.

You may well, at this point, be saying out loud “Who?” and yet if you’ve been inside the stadium for a home game 10 minutes or less before kick-off then you will have heard them.

The guitar-themed, very heavy bass track that is played over the tannoy either side of the announcement that ‘the two-minute bell has sounded, the Golden Boys are on the way’ is a tune called ‘It’s Gonna Be Alright’ by a band called Technocat, though I use band in the loosest sense.

As far as I can tell – and it’s hard to find any info about them – Technocat was a collaboration between three DJs/producers called Bobby Heatlie, Ian Robertson and Tom Wilson.

They didn’t have a lot of chart success commercially: It’s Gonna Be Alright peaked at No.94 in the Official UK Chart in September 1996.

It seems they did release another couple of singles, The Journey and eponymously-titled Technocat, but they were far more known in the rave scene at the time than they were likely to appear on Top of the Pops.

They were, according to one website I found a paragraph on, a “1996 electronic progressive trance” act, which probably says a lot about my music taste in my mid-20s (and why my wife insisted I used headphones in the house when listening to “that crap you like”).

Anyhow, enough about the band themselves – though if anyone anywhere knows anything about them, I’d love to know if they have any idea that that their near 30-year-old tune is even played at Vicarage Road.

The reason for bringing this up now is that every time the song is played just before kick-off these days, I will ask anyone in earshot (my sons, Watford FC media team, fellow local journalists) if I’ve ever told them that it was me that brought Technocat to Vicarage Road.

Their tired nods and strained ‘yes you have’ replies have made me realise I’ve exhausted their interest, but because I know quite a lot of fans like the track, I thought I’d share the story with a wider audience (and then promise never to mention it again).

I believe it was the summer of 2000. Watford had made a brief stop in the Premier League but were preparing for life back in the Championship.

In the likes of manager Graham Taylor and Marketing Director Ed Coan, we had at that time a quorum who very much had Watford at heart, and who used that debut top-flight season to learn about how the club could be improved, on and off the pitch.

I was Head of Communications in those days, and so I was involved in a number of the discussions.

Some projects were big, some were small. One of them was looking at any ways we could improve the atmosphere in the lead-up to kick-off.

If my memory serves me correctly, one of the most highly-charged and intimidating atmospheres we faced was actually at Sunderland.

At the Stadium of Light, they blasted out Prokofiev’s Dance of the Knights shortly before kick-off on a matchday, and it generated an incredible, electric atmosphere that sent shivers down the spine.

Better known now as the theme to BBC TV’s The Apprentice, it’s a piece that when played very loudly in a venue cannot fail to get the blood pumping.

As now, Watford walked out on the pitch to Z-Cars – that wasn’t going to change, but we felt we needed some music which could lead up to that.

Not only would it hopefully generate some noise, but it would act as a message to those in the concourses or even still making their way along Vicarage Road that the teams were close to taking to the field.

The idea was to have a piece of music long enough – because officials and teams don’t always leave the dressing room as fast or slow as you anticipate – to start being played around 2.50pm, which could then be blended into the start of Z Cars.

Or, as the DJs call it, mixed.

If you listen to the very start of Z Cars there is a portion of drumming – not drum ‘n’ bass style drumming, but some obvious drums which then lead into the shrill of the pipes and whistles that become the familiar theme tune.

So, we were looking for something that had some drums which could then be seamlessly transitioned into those opening bars of Z Cars.

Then, as now, I like my music.

I think it’s fair to say that not many others like my music though, because it is extremely eclectic.

From rave and dance, to heavy rock and country. I like a bit of everything.

On long away trips I will be as happy to listening to my Steps playlist, or my Fleetwood Mac playlist, or my 90s Club Classics.

So that summer of 2000 I started sifting through my CD collection (look it up younger readers, but I have progressed to Spotify these days).

There were loads of dance/pop compilations, but I was trying to find something nobody else used, or indeed might not even find.

I narrowed it down to a few obscure tracks, and spent one summer evening at the home of the club’s former matchday presenter Richard Short, along with the current presenter Tim Coombs.

Me telling two people who DJ and present regularly what I thought would make the perfect pre-match music was, in hindsight, a bit of a cheek.

Nonetheless, we listened to tracks and I’m pretty sure Shorty even started mixing one or two together using decks rested on his ironing board. It was far removed from a professional studio.

The track we liked was the one you hear now – It’s Gonna Be Alright by Technocat. But this obscurity wasn’t esoteric enough in its original guise. Oh no.

The version I had stumbled upon was actually the ‘Northern Boys Spanish Guitar Mix’. Thanks to John O’Halloran and Tony Cochrane who are, I believe, the Northern Boys that created this remix. Like the members of Technocat, I doubt they have any idea…

If you listen to the original mix it is very different to the version played at Vicarage Road.

So we had Technocat. The only problem was it was less than six minutes long, and both Richard and Tim said there were several occasions during a season where the teams, for whatever reason, would take longer than six minutes to actually walk out of the tunnel from the moment the first signs of movement occurred.

We needed something to mix into the end of Technocat which, if required, could fill the gap between that and Z Cars.

Back to my piles of CDs and my shortlist, and when it came to songs that had a lot of drumming in them I’d mentioned a track called Give It Up by The Good Men.

It was a dance track that relied heavily on a synthesised drum beat with a slightly African feel, which is odd considering The Good Men were two Dutch DJs called Rene ter Horst and Gaston Steenkist.

It actually got to No.5 in the UK charts, and was later sampled by Simply Red on their 1996 hit Fairground – me and Mick Hucknall have such good taste.

Richard and Tim quickly saw that Give It Up could readily be mixed onto the end of It’s Gonna Be Alright, and so I left them to it.

From the start of the 2000/2001 season, the two tracks were played from around 2.50pm (or whatever constituted 10 minutes to kick-off), and then Z Cars kicked in as the teams walked out.

And, pretty much for nearly a quarter of a century – give or take a few spells where it was replaced – that ‘ironing board’ megamix has been the music you hear (or possibly have become completely oblivious to) just before kick-off.

My other musical claim to Vicarage Road fame is that the music played when the Watford team comes back out for the start of the second half is another track from my collection that I suggested, called Sandstorm by the Finnish DJ Darude.

That reached No.3 in the UK charts in the summer of 1999, and it too has stood the test of time and was still played this season.

Of course, that Elton John lad has muscled in on my act and the club now play an excerpt from Your Song in the seconds just before the match starts – but it’s hard to deny him that accolade given what he’s done for the club…

So that is the story of how my very niche dance music collection came to be part of the Vicarage Road matchday experience.

And now I’ve shared it publicly, I can hear the sigh of relief amongst those who know I will now no longer attempt to regale them with this tale.