Cast your mind back to a decade ago, when Vicarage Road was a quieter, emptier ground - and not even finished on four sides.

It’s easy to forget such a recent memory, because of just how far Watford have come off the pitch, as well as on it, in the intervening time.

Marco Silva’s squad is beginning to turn the eyes of the Premier League on the field, so too is the raucous noise and striking, imposing displays off it.

In recent years, they include a Graham Taylor tribute after the Hornets legend died in January, and presentations recognising Gino Pozzo and Odion Ighalo - as well as the now familiar black hart flag.

And the 1881 Movement, the band of fans based in the Rookery End who are behind those memorable sights, are stepping things up another gear.

The group is far from the sole catalyst behind the crescendo of atmosphere at Vicarage Road, but has certainly helped turn the home end into a catalyst for something more, and have something new to reveal before tomorrow’s game with Arsenal.

“We’re going for the British record for the biggest printed flag at a sporting event,” Roy Moore, whose brainchild the 1881 was, said. “The only mention I’ve been able to find of a record is Aston Villa’s flag that got rejected from Wembley a few years ago.

“This one will cover the whole of the Rookery - the design is secret, but it’ll include the word ‘audentior’ which is on the town crest and means ‘to go forward with boldness’.

“It’ll only be up for a few minutes but we want the message to the players to be to hold their heads high and be proud. Nothing we’ve ever done is about us, it’s always been about players, chairmen and managers.”

The idea for the flag has been in the group’s mind for a while, but was properly floated only four months ago. Some £3,280 has been raised since then, an impressive figure in such a short space of time, but the operation itself tomorrow could prove just as challenging.

“It will take 100 people from start to finish,” Moore said. “That’s people to keep an eye on it, and to get it out of our storage and into the stand. The club have been brilliant with us, they were apprehensive about things we’ve done in the past but they’ve always let us do it and we haven’t let them down.”

Getting from start to finish on what is an extensive project is tough work for Moore and fellow organisers of the 1881, but it’s a task they relish - and one they’re not planning on giving up on any time soon.

“My kids never used to like coming to football but they love it, the buzz and the atmosphere,” Moore added. “That’s what does it for me. We’ve had fans from the big clubs talking to us because it’s not necessarily the ‘English’ way to do things.

“I’d really like to do a curtain next, like in Europe, and that’d need some pulleys to get it all working. But we’ll see if the club agree to it first.”