Only four people in history have made more first-team appearances for Watford than Lloyd Doyley – Luther Blissett, Nigel Gibbs, Gary Porter and Duncan Welbourne. The four men ahead of him in that list have all been inducted into the Hornets hall of fame, a select club that Doyley must surely join at some point in the future.

No one would claim that Doyley was the most talented footballer to pull on a yellow shirt but he was the ultimate professional, a man who earned the respect of his peers and of the ten managers he played under.

But when it came to bringing down the curtain on 14 years as a professional at Vicarage Road, Doyley didn’t really get an adequate chance to say goodbye.

His final appearance in the first team was on Boxing Day 2014, when Watford lost 1-0 at home to Wolves. A neck injury ruled him out of the rest of that successful campaign but he was on the pitch to celebrate promotion to the Premier League with the rest of his teammates. Troy Deeney had asked Doyley to lift the trophy with him if Watford had clinched the Championship title that afternoon against Sheffield Wednesday.

Now Doyley finally has the opportunity to say farewell in style. A chapter of the latest book in the Tales from the Vicarage series, is called A Letter From Lloyd and it is Doyley’s thank you to the fans.

In it, he writes: “You saw me come into the team when I was only 18 and you supported me even though I found it quite hard to step up at the beginning. You stuck behind me the whole way – although I’m sure there were a few moments when you were tearing your hair out – but I like to think you recognised that I worked hard every time I pulled on the shirt. I know I gave my best every time I represented you on the pitch because I knew that, if you were in my position, you’d do everything you could to help the team.”

Doyley evaluates the managers he played under, from Gianluca Vialli, who gave him his debut. He talks about the inspirational leadership of Aidy Boothroyd, his most difficult opponents in the Premier League and the way the club’s finances and ambition ebbed away after relegation. Doyley explains how close he came to leaving the Hornets when Brendan Rodgers came in and said he was not part of his plans.

And he talks about the difficulty, at first, of playing for Malky Mackay and Sean Dyche when they became managers, both of whom had been alongside him in the Hornets defence. “I kept calling him ‘Malky’ out of habit and managers don’t like that. They want to be called gaffer or boss. I kept saying, ‘Malky… sorry, gaffer!’ I think if I’d kept on he’d have started fining me!”

But most importantly of all, for Doyley at least, he gets a chance to tell Watford’s supporters how much their support over the years meant to him.


Tales from the Vicarage volume five is available now from The Hornets Shop, Waterstones, Amazon and talesfrom.com/watford.