For the players, memories of Watford's first FA Cup final still sting like it was yesterday

One thing is for sure, as Javi Gracia prepares his team for their confrontation with Pep Guardiola’s newly crowned champions, they will not have to face the issues his predecessor did in 1984. For a start, unlike Graham Taylor, the then Watford manager, he will not have the team’s breakfast on the morning of the game broadcast live on national television. What is more, it will not be served up by Michael Barrymore.

“It was unbelievable,” recalls Neil Price, the Watford left-back that day and now a property developer. “The television companies had embedded comedians into the team hotels. Everton had Freddie Starr and we had Michael Barrymore. While we were having breakfast, he was prancing around doing his Basil Fawlty impressions. You look back now and you think: we were about to play the most important game of our lives and we had that going on, what sort of preparation is that? But at the time you just thought: well, it’s the cup final.”

Mind, at Watford they should have been used to that sort of thing. The club had been propelled up the divisions in the previous few years through the combination of Elton John’s ownership and Taylor’s management. The association with the world’s most flamboyant rock star gave the club a proper showbiz sparkle.

“Elton would often bring his mates down to the dressing room after matches,” Price recalls. “He brought Rod Stewart more than once. You just got kind of used to him being around. When I signed as a 14-year-old, it was done in his office at the stadium. Afterwards, my parents and I left and he came flying out of his room, holding my mum’s handbag. He goes, ‘Mrs Price, you left your handbag, take it quick otherwise they’ll all think it’s mine’.”

Taylor remembers the club’s end-of-season awards night became renowned for its entertainment value. “It was always held at Baileys nightclub in Watford,” he says. “The fans would come along and Graham insisted we all do a turn for them. It was like a talent night. Except without the talent. I remember once I got up and told a joke. I’ve never heard silence like the one that greeted my punch line.”

The manager would lead the way by getting the coaching staff to mime to records, dressed up as pop acts (his favourite was turning out as Showaddywaddy). On one occasion Steve Harrison, one of the coaches, got kitted up like the club chairman and strode on stage, bouncing around to an Elton John hit.

“He’s getting this fantastic reception, everyone’s cheering and laughing and he thinks he’s doing really well, so he keeps on going,” Price remembers. “Then he turns round and there’s Elton himself, who has come on stage behind him and has been mimicking his every move.”

It was the spirit engendered through such activities that helped Watford rise up the footballing ladder, to the point where they finished runners-up in the top flight in 1983. A year later and they were in the cup final.

“It was a massive achievement for a club of Watford’s size,” Taylor says. “You have to say, it was all down to Graham.” Price agrees: “He was an excellent man manager, a really good person, you’d run through a brick wall for him. He got every single ounce of everything out of you, turned average players into top division.” Tactically, the manager knew precisely what he wanted, working tirelessly on the training ground on fitness and team shape. There was not much in the way of passing, however.

“Les played in central midfield and I was left-back and I don’t think I passed to him once all that season,” says Price. “Graham wanted you to clip balls into the channel. Never play it inside, was his mantra. Put it in there and he’d go ballistic. That was one thing about the cup final: it was so loud in Wembley, for once you couldn’t hear Graham yelling at you.”

This was a simple footballing philosophy: get the ball in the box early and have a lot of shots on goal. The more his team had, was the manager’s view, the more likely they were to score.

“At half-time, he’d give you a right rollicking if you hadn’t had enough goes at goal,” Taylor says. “He’d be counting. ‘You’ve only had four shots’, he would yell. The way teams play now, 50 passes before anyone has a shot, Graham would’ve hated that.”

But unlike the Wimbledon side who pursued a similar direct approach as they made their way up the football pyramid, the manager insisted there should be no physical intimidation involved. Respect, not bullying, was the mantra. Nonetheless, Price recalls being disappointed that he did not make more of a mark on the opposition in the cup final. He remembers letting Trevor Steven, Everton’s winger, skip by him early in the game.

“In those days, you got away with the first one, you could basically do anything first five minutes,” he says. “Right at the start I had a chance to go in on him. But it was just in front of the dugouts and I kind of hesitated. I should have taken him out chest high, made him know what he was up against, but I held off. I think the occasion got to me.”

Indeed, both players agree the scale of things undermined the whole team. The noise, the history, the importance: this was the youngest side to play in the final (Price was only 20) unversed in the big event. Back then there was no bigger game.

“The thing is, we weren’t the underdogs like the lads this weekend will be,” Taylor says. “Though that Everton side would go on to win loads, at the time we were pretty even. We had finished 11th in the first division, Everton seventh.” The narrowness of division was evident in the first 20 minutes when Watford had chances to take the lead. Indeed, two fell to Taylor, one early shot just missing the post.

“I was gutted. To score in the final, it would have been fantastic,” he says. “Goals change games and they took their chances. We didn’t.” Graeme Sharp scored Everton’s first, then Andy Gray headed the ball out of the Watford goalkeeper Steve Sherwood’s hands for the second. It is a goal Watford fans still seethe about, insisting it was a foul. But those who were playing are more philosophical.

“Fair play to Andy Gray, those challenges were allowed then,” Taylor says. “You’d say to your centre-forward before the game: go put one in on their goalie. The truth of the matter is, Steve should have smacked his head off.” Taylor says such was the disappointment of missing out, he has still to watch a replay. It was the biggest game of his career, and he lost. But Watford reaching the final this season has made him re-examine his feelings.

“Looking back, we made history. The first Watford team to do it. That’s something to be proud of.”

Price agrees. “We’ve been a bit too hard on ourselves since,” he says of the players. “It was a brilliant day for supporters and everybody. Looking back at it now, we were privileged to do it.” One thing, though, about all the retrospection: none of the Watford players have any photographic evidence that they were actually there that day. Barrymore might have had a central role, but photographers seemingly were not invited.

“None of us has a team photo taken that day,” says Price, who now runs the Watford former players’ association. “I’ve been told there were only six photographers accredited, which seems unbelievable now. So if anybody knows where to get hold of a team photo ...”