**In the build-up to the 25-year anniversary of Watford's 2-0 play-off final victory over Bolton Wanderers on May 31, we will be reproducing some of Mike Walters' Party Like It's 1999 articles which have appeared in this season's matchday programme.**

Mike looks back on the key individuals from the squad which secured promotion to the Premier League. This time, it's Nick Wright...

It was supposed to be the first time that two former England managers crossed swords at club level.

Back at the clubs where their managerial careers blossomed, Terry Venables and his successor as Three Lions coach, Graham Taylor, were due to collide at Selhurst Park.

But Taylor, who had been evacuated to hospital days earlier with blue lights flashing and siren wailing, was unable to attend the game as he recovered from a severe throat abscess, and it's probably just as well.

The rotten penalty decision which denied Watford all three points at Crystal Palace in 1998 was enough to make you scream so loud it would shed your larynx to bits.

    The Hornets had surged into an early two-goal lead through Nick Wright's superb header from Allan Smart's cross and Peter Kennedy's predatory finish at the back post.

But David Tuttle's deflected header gave Palace a foothold in the contest, and a quarter of an hour from the end Sasa Curcic's spot-kick earned the Eagles a deserved point, although it was hotly-disputed and a travesty of fair play.

Curcic, trying to go past Darren Bazeley, hung his leg out like a fisherman casting his line, and referee Steve Bennett, from nearby Orpington, bought it hook, line and sinker.

Wright's third goal of the season, and his second in successive games, had been exemplary in its execution, although his finest hour would be six months down the track on a momentous date at Wembley.

Never prolific but always industrious and threatening, Wright will always be revered at Vicarage Road for the overhead kick which put the Golden Boys on course for the Premier League in the play-off final against Bolton Wanderers.

“Every time I bump into a Watford fan, it's the first thing they want to talk about,” said Wright.

“But I don't mind – it's not a bad way to have your memory jogged and, fortunately, I still recall everything about it vividly, from watching it go in through a defender's legs to Paul Robinson nearly ending my career with his rugby tackle in the celebration!”

    Sadly, the party in 1999 was as good as it got for Wright. At 23, it was the beginning of the end of his playing days.

Already managing a groin injury which restricted him to four Premier League appearances the following season, he suffered another blow in a reserve team game against Coventry which was intended to build his fitness.

Barely 90 seconds into the match he collided with the Sky Blues' veteran goalkeeper Steve Ogrizovic and came off decidedly second-best.

The resulting damage to Wright's knee cartilage was so severe that he made only one more appearance, in a League Cup defeat by Notts County, in September 2000 before he was forced to retire three years later after an ill-starred trial at Bristol Rovers.

There was only an 18-month gap between his league debut for Carlisle in 1997 and that glorious, acrobatic volley dipping into the Bolton net at Wembley. Regrettably, there were only 16 months between the promotion triumph and Wright's last game at Vicarage Road.

But his place in Hornets legend is safe forever as the scorer of one of the most famous goals in the club's history.

And he will always be grateful that Taylor waited by the visitors' dressing room, after Carlisle's narrow 2-1 defeat at The Vic in March 1998, to shake each player's hand, tell them how well they had played, and to let Wright know his card was marked.

Within four months, he would be a Watford player.

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