Our latest appearance on the Sky Leeds United channel is at Watford is on Good Friday, with an 8pm kick off. You’ll find Vicarage Road just to the west of Watford town centre.

If you’re coming by car you need to leave the M1 at junction 5 and take the third exit off the roundabout, A4008 (Stephenson Way), signposted Watford Town Centre. At the next roundabout follow signs to Town Centre, and immediately in front of you is the Harlequin Centre.

Stay in the middle lane of the three lane carriageway on ring road, and after the second set of traffic lights (Watford Springs on your left), move into the left lane and take the turning signposted Hospital and West Watford.

Then follow signs to Rickmansworth / West Watford A4145, take left hand lane and bear left at traffic lights and you’ll get to the ground. The floodlights are visible from some way off, but if you get lost you can look for signs to Watford General hospital.

There is virtually no street parking around Vicarage Road, as local streets are blocked by the police, and side streets fill up very quickly with home traffic. There are also some private match day car parks available at some industrial units near the ground, as well as the Vicarage Road Girls School, which is close to the stadium and charges a whopping £10 per car.

As the ground is close to the centre of town, then there are a number of car parks in walking distance. The Church multi storey car park on the inner ring road is a 15 minute walk from the ground and costs £1 per hour, though you might have to queue for a while to get out after the match.

The main railway station is Watford Junction, on the main line from Euston, which is about a 20 minute walk. From here you take the main road straight opposite (Clarendon Road) all the up to the High Street. Turn left and go past Wetherspoons (Moon under Water) on your right and then take the first right after 100 yards into Market Street. Continue along again crossing Ring Road to the next T junction. Turn left here, then take the next right into Vicarage Road.

If you can’t raise the energy to walk this far you can get a local train one stop to Watford High Street, a ten minute walk away from the ground. Watford underground station (on the Metropolitan line) is about a mile away, but the tube journey from central London takes longer than to the Overground stations.

There used to be a separate ‘Watford Stadium Halt’ on the Croxley Green branch, but that has been disused since 1996. More recently there was a plan to bring part of this line back into use as the ‘Croxley Rail Link’, which would extend the Metropolitan line to Watford Junction and included a new ‘Watford Vicarage Road,’ station. But at present it’s not clear if there is funding available for this project to go ahead. (There probably isn’t).

There are a couple of decent pubs in the town centre, including the ‘Moon Under Water’ (see above) in the High Street. Also recommended are three real ale pubs near Watford Junction station, the ‘Estcourt Tavern (which you can find by turning left outside the station and taking the second left into Gartlet Road), the ‘Southern Cross’ in Langley Road and the ‘Nascot Arms’ in Stamford Road. The best option near the ground is 'Oddfellows' in Fearnley Street, which is small but welcoming.

To comply with the Taylor Report, Watford had to re-build both ends of the ground during the 1990s. Away supporters used to have a long walk to the away end as you had to walk around some allotments, but this is no longer the case, as we now have the Vicarage Road Stand at the opposite end of the ground.

This stand is shared with home supporters and we have an allocation of 2,104 seats, out of a total capacity of 22,200, which inevitably sold out as soon as it went on sale. Thanks to one of those jolly reciprocal deals they cost £20 for adults, with different classes of concession from £5 to £10.

Watford are only selling tickets for the home stands to those who had something called a Fan ID before March 1st. The game didn’t come up when I went into ‘Home Tickets’ on their website (only in the interests of research) which either means that it’s sold out or it wouldn’t let me see it because I haven’t got a login.

With the away section being a new stand, the view from here is pretty good, but unlike home fans, we don’t have the privilege of being able to buy alcohol in our section. Some folk have given them 1 star reviews on Tripadvisor for this, but I don’t mind, as it would probably have been overpriced **** anyway. The narrow concourse makes it hard to get to the serving hatches to buy any food, and the small roof means that the front rows get wet if it rains and the wind is blowing in the wrong direction.

Watford had hoped to move to a larger stadium at nearby Bushey Green with a capacity of 33,000 but this plan has now been abandoned after the pandemic and their relegation into the Championship. They are still on the lookout for an alternative, so we might get a bigger allocation at Watford sometime in the future, but if you hold your breath waiting for it, the chances are that you will suffocate.

Some of this stuff came from www.footballgroundguide.com .

Reuters

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