NEXT week Saints travel to Watford who, no doubt, in their programme will relate to games gone by between the clubs and particularly the amazing 7-1 scoreline in the second leg of the League Cup over 20 years ago.

We were 4-0 up after a first leg remembered particularly for an amazing goal by Nick Holmes, who lobbed the keeper literally from the halfway line just in front of the trainers' boxes.

The second leg in the minds of certainly some of our senior players was a formality.

It was in the days of Watford manager Graham Taylor famously being labelled as a long-ball merchant, but this disguised the fact that he had groomed some excellent players such as wingers Barnes and Callaghan, who were quick and delivered terrific crosses for their giant centre forward Ross Jenkins.

Coupled with the fact that I had in goal the lovely Ivan Katalinic, who had to be best shot stopper around at

that time and had famously stopped everything that Liveprool threw him at Anfield one day when we pulled off a 1-0, but who couldn't handle the aerial bombardment at Vicarage Road. He was rooted to his line as the goals rained in

The game went into extra time with the aggregate score 5-5, but we finished losing out 7-5, but as even true Watford supporters would remember, we had a goal disallowed and a definite penalty turned down.

But really they weren't too sorry for us as we limped away, tails between the legs. Suffice to say, I was so outraged by it all that the players hesitated to get on the bus and two of them to my knowledge went home under their own steam.

Even the press men in the tiniest room of any club at that time took one look at me as I walked in and dropped their heads waiting for some young innocent like Bob Brunskell to summon up the courage to ask how I felt.

Fortunately we as a club showed our resilience and have continued an unbroken run in the top flight since 1979, while clubs like Watford may have shone for awhile but have never regained top flight status.