Quite rightly, much has been made this past week of Graham Taylor’s success on the field: the rise up three divisions before realising ‘The Impossible Dream’ of reaching the top flight; the FA Cup and League Cup giant-killing en route; the unexpected successes in Europe and of course the FA Cup Final.

But in addition to that Graham ran the club. He was the effective chief executive: the man answerable only to Elton John and the board. All the administrative strands ran through him and, in effect, the likes of Eddie Plumley, Bertie Mee and the successive commercial department heads, reported to him.

He did not involve himself in the minutiae but he was very much the managing director at Vicarage Road and so the ultimate decision-maker.

It was extremely fortunate that with Elton John as chairman, there was a meeting of minds. Their humour and personalities gelled “like brothers” and so too did their visions. Elton had long enjoyed soccer in the USA where families, supporting rival clubs, would picnic in the massive car parks before a game, knowing little or nothing of crowd segregation, far less hooliganism. His non-executive involvement with LA Aztecs brought him closer to the hub of stateside football and he wanted a similar friendly model at Vicarage Road.

Graham had already pioneered a community approach at Lincoln “taking the club to the community, visiting local factories. “They watch us work and they quite enjoyed us coming to watch them work,” he observed. His Sincil Bank experiences laid the foundation for the development of the theme at Vicarage Road.

Within three weeks of taking over, Taylor launched the ball and kit sponsorship schemes with the promise of a Sponsors’ Dinner, at which fans sat at a designated table with the player they had sponsored. It became a much-loved tradition and, while perhaps not economically viable for the club, brought fans and players closer.

It was the first step towards ‘the family club’.

Before long, Watford’s players were kicking balls into the crowd before kick-off, or handing out pieces of regalia and any reasonable request from the public was granted, resulting in players knocking over piles of pennies at pubs, opening fetes etc. It was not, as the manager pointed out, written into their contracts at that Fourth Division stage but subsequently, hours devoted to community work became part of the deal.

In his first week, Graham asked me if there was any tune that Watford fans associated with a happy past and I came up with the memory of Z-Cars, the only tune in the history of the club to be played for any length of time as the players took the field. It was the choice of former boss Bill McGarry and Watford set up an unbeaten home record of 27 games over 1963-64.

So with the help of Elton’s manager John Reid, who arranged to get acetates made of the old 45rpm disc I managed to unearth, Z-Cars returned and became a tradition. In passing I should mention that I was very touched upon my retirement to be presented by supporters’ representatives with an inscribed and framed disc of Z-cars on the pitch before my final game.

On occasions in those early days, Graham would arrange for two or three fans, usually a family, to sit on the bench with him and the staff during a match. Afterwards he would take them into the dressing room and later brought them to the press room.

He laid great stress that “we are all in this together” and wrestled with the fact Vicarage Road’s was not a raucous crowd. He tried to bridge what Stoke manager Tony Waddington had described as the ‘tranquillity syndrome” of the ground. He also took the crowd to task on occasions for their booing substitutions, performances or individuals.

On one occasion in the league’s second tier, he berated the crowd, quite justifiably in my opinion, and received many hostile letters from fans. In those days Watford ‘struggled’ in Division Two and there was a feeling in some quarters that perhaps he was a lower division manager. He did not walk on water at that stage but he took a step towards that status when he emerged before the next home game carrying a board, which he held up in the centre circle. It read simply: I’m Sorry.

From the outset, with our help, we turned the Watford Observer Awards into a special end-of-season night. Feeling that the resident Bailey’s ‘nitespot’ emcee did not quite generate the dignity for the awards and observing the extrovert dressing room humour of such as Dennis Booth and Steve Harrision, I suggested the night was turned over to the club and newspaper, to produce a succession of memorable end-of-term occasions.

The outbreak of hooliganism in November 1979, which involved orchestrated Birmingham fans running amok in the Red Lion corner of the Vicarage Road end, prompted Watford to come down hard on hooliganism with the assistance and direction of the local police. Seeing police kneeling on the roof of turnstiles became a familiar sight.

Watford became the ‘family club’ and the reaction of families of fans facing price rises for entry sparked the development of the family enclosure as the club propagated the concept of Vicarage Road being safe for women and children to attend.

Taylor also came down hard on offensive chants and these too were stamped out.

While Watford officials privately admitted that anyone truly intent on causing mayhem on the terraces would be hard to stop, hooliganism as such was absent from the ground for many years until the mid-1990s and the visit of Portsmouth one Easter.

When the manager ran the London Marathon for funds for the opening of the new Family Terrace, Watford were well established as the family club, with a family room, enclosure and ultimately a terrace. The image received nationwide television coverage when Elton John was seen handing out Easter eggs from the pitch-side to children in the family enclosure and terrace. As a result, a succession of rival clubs beat a path to Watford’s door to see “the what and the how” of things, run under the auspices of the admirable Anne Swanson.

Watford was by no means the first to have such a concept for the famous schoolboy “Pen” at The Kop, Anfield, was introduced before the First World War. Yet they took the concept to embrace families.

Such was the success, following the Heysel disaster etc, the club was mentioned in Parliament for the hooligan-free initiatives. They were undoubted and recognised brand leaders in these concepts at a time when hooliganism was a significant national problem.

The Popplewell Inquiry into crowd safety, following the Bradford fire, sent representatives to Vicarage Road and they expressed amazement the club’s policies had been achieved without the use of fencing or the ‘cages’ established in most grounds – a concept that was to be redundant after the Hillsborough Disaster.

“The family club” and a hooligan-free ground – the fact going to Vicarage Road was a pleasant experience for young families - was also Graham Taylor’s initiative and achievement. The man created a football Camelot at Vicarage Road.