With the 2022 centenary of Watford’s move to Vicarage Road approaching, writers from The Watford Treasury magazine look back at players who performed great feats on home soil during 100 years at The Vic, in pieces originally published in the matchday programme.

First up, Geoff Wicken writes about a player whose remarkable achievement within 18 months of the opening of The Vic has never been repeated.

It’s rare to see a player score four goals in a single match. Only seven Watford players have done it in a league game at Vicarage Road since the ground opened in 1922: pre-war greats Tommy Barnett and Taffy Davies, followed by Maurice Cook, Barry Dyson, Ross Jenkins, Luther Blissett (who also did it in an FA Cup tie) and most recently Odion Ighalo. A short list, but a distinguished one.

One man, however, outdid all of them. His performance came in just Watford’s second season at Vicarage Road. The five goals Eddie Mummery scored against Newport County have stood as a Watford record since January 1924.

And yet, unlike the four-goal men who had fine careers in which they scored consistently, Mummery’s career was notable for little else. His five-goal effort was freakishly out of context both with Watford’s 1923/24 season and with his own career.

The 1923/24 season was one of struggle at Vicarage Road. It would end with Watford in 20th place of the 22 clubs in Division 3 South. The only two sides to finish lower, and to suffer the ignominy of having to apply for re-election to the league, were – surprisingly from today’s vantage point – Bournemouth and Queens Park Rangers.

Goalscoring was the problem. As 1923 turned to 1924, Watford had only won three out of 23 games, and had only found the net four times in the last 10. Then everything changed – although only for one afternoon. The first match of 1924, on January 5, was against Newport. Suddenly the forwards – especially Mummery – found their form, and Watford went goal-crazy, winning 8-2. After that, it was back to normal. Watford’s next six games brought just three goals, although one of them did bring a surprise FA Cup win away to Middlesbrough, then in the First Division.

The Newport game stands out just as much in Mummery’s Watford career. He played 126 times altogether, either as a forward or a half-back in the positions of the day. His total goals tally was 23 – five of them came on this one remarkable day, and there were only 18 others, spread across six seasons. He was to drop out of league football in 1926, and returned to his home county of Norfolk where he ran a pub and remained involved in local football until dying prematurely of influenza at the young age of 39.

His career, then, had one major highlight. But what a highlight it was. Mummery had one afternoon when everything came together for him. The Watford Observer match report provides a little more detail. It tells us that Mummery had a hat-trick by half-time. He scored early on, and after two more Watford goals, ‘added another brace, the second finding Carr blundering’. After half-time and a sixth Watford goal, ‘Mummery, who seemed able to do as he liked with the Newport backs, added another couple’. It was, as his profile in the following season’s Watford Observer Handbook put it, ‘a most brilliant display’.

The Observer reporter’s final word on the Newport match showed great foresight. ‘Never before have Watford scored eight goals in a league match. It will be a long time, I fancy, before Saturday’s record is beaten’.

Sure enough, it has still to be beaten even now, almost a century later. It has been equalled, just once, on a golden sunny afternoon in September 1982, when Watford put eight past Sunderland. Blissett scored four that day, one of many superb career achievements, but he didn’t quite match Mummery.

Unlike Luther, most players don’t end up in the record books for their achievements. But Mummery did, thanks to one game. That afternoon in January 1924, Eddie Mummery had his one magical career moment. He achieved something that no-one else has done – yet – and in doing so became a Vicarage Road hero.

Watch Now

SEO Image