In the summer of 2001, I was driving my hire car around the shores of one of the Italian lakes, looking forward to the first game of Luca Vialli’s and Watford’s pre-season tour.

My phone rang and chief executive Tim Shaw was on the line. Apparently the new share issue had gone “exceedingly well” he informed me.

To put that in practical terms, my modest, nominal investment of £250 was worth £400 that morning.

It was an indication that all appeared to be well with the Hornets as they prepared to embark on a brave new venture. I cite five girls as a reason for the restriction to my investment but the £150 increase in my share value meant little to me. I had paid in £250, which represented around 0.8 per cent of my wages back then, expecting to lose it but the gesture was important. The directors, aware of my scepticism over the Vialli appointment, needed reminding that at heart I was a Watford fan and had been so longer than any of them.

A year later, as Ray Lewington shuffled his unbalanced squad and appeared to be making an impact on the second tier, the value of my £250 investment had sunk to £37.50, for reasons harped upon in this column in recent months.

The loss of my shares’ value meant little to me compared with the suffering of Nicky Wright, Gifton Noel-Williams and Richard Johnson.

In a reserve team game in November 2002, both Wright and Johnson were in action against Chelsea but a nasty two-footed tackle by Robert Huth rightly earned him a red card after 45 minutes. It was a dangerous tackle and could have brought an early closure to the latest comeback being undertaken by Play-off hero Wright.

Wright celebrated subsequently with his first goal since March but Johnson was not so fortunate. Booked in the first half for dissent, he reacted angrily to being tugged repeatedly by a Chelsea player and received a red card.

It is sad to see those incidents in my yellowing files of the Watford Observer, which I had referred to here in France. Wright was just six months away from finally calling time on his football career, cut short by a reoccurring knee problem and Johnson, who had picked up his injury while in the Premier League in March 2000, was forced to call it a day in September 2003 – a knee problem again the cause.

Another player, Noel-Williams, was still on the club’s books some three years after the discovery that the then teenager had a serious arthritic problem. It had gone unsuspected during his time at Vicarage Road, which was not surprising given his age and the fact he had not needed an x-ray, but a knee injury sustained against Sunderland in what was the run-in to the Play-offs and the then Premiership, revealed the fact his career was in danger.

Special treatment, designed in the USA, enabled Gifton to pick up the pieces of his career and he continued to play for a number of clubs but his appearances were limited as a result of his condition.

“He looks terrific in training and in a small-side game but the physios have warned me not to be tempted to play him yet as he still needs plenty of treatment,” Lewington told me, while admitting: “I am sorely tempted nevertheless.”

Gifton managed to obtain a career in the game but the early promise of this tough, strong, strapping striker was handicapped. At one stage he looked set for the top with Watford, or at the very least bringing a large transfer fee to Vicarage Road, but he, along with Wright and Johnson, was unable to make a real impact once the condition was discovered. He made more than 190 appearances, scoring 41 goals for the Hornets before moving on to Stoke, Burnley, Brighton, Spain and the USA.

It is ironic to think that but for those serious injuries, Graham Taylor, Vialli or Lewington would have been able to call upon three extremely important players from 2000 onwards. Indeed the club’s progress, or lack of it, might well have been different had they not been so badly handicapped. The loss of each of those players was, to a varying degree, a severe blow.

While the Hornets were unable to enter the transfer market, they continued to place the accent on developing their own talent. The club released a brochure focusing on the club’s Academy and its work – a timely reminder how far player development at youth level within the club had progressed and modernised. It was a statement of intent, despite the serious financial problems, that the club intended to continue to try and supply players for the first team.

It was interesting to read that since 1980, of some 160 players taken into the club’s youth system, 89 of them (56 per cent) reached professional status at Watford. The club’s youth scheme, which owed much to Tom Walley who took over and galvanised the whole structure back in 1977, saw 51 of those 89 going on to play for Watford’s first team, of which half of that number represented their country at youth, Under-21 or full international level.

In the early Southern League days, Watford produced the likes of Eddie Edmonds and and there was the most successful of home grown products in Arthur Grimsdell (Spurs and England). Skilly Williams, Frank Smith and Arthur Woodward were notable local successes and Watford first-team stalwarts in the first 40 years of the 20th Century. However, those 20-odd years from 1977 to 2002 were far more productive with a far greater number of players making the professional grade than in all the previous and subsequent 113 years in the club’s history.