Dwelling Floor Heroes: Tommy Barnett

‘Within the forty third minute BARNETT added a fifth from O’Brien’s move, Robertson being helpless from a drive from shut vary.’

The truth that Tommy Barnett’s 88th-minute purpose broke the membership’s league goalscoring document appears to have gone unrecognised on the time. It’s only with the exhaustive statistical information obtainable to us as we speak (for which we should thank the late Trefor Jones) that we will pinpoint the sport inside which Tommy achieved the feat.

Tommy’s 12 targets by the season’s finish helped Watford attain a then joint-highest-ever league place of sixth in Division Three (South). The following 4 years noticed the membership obtain successive league finishes of fifth, then fourth place for 3 seasons operating. Who is aware of whether or not Tommy Barnett may have created a sensation by firing Watford to promotion in 1939/40 to play towards extra illustrious Second Division opposition?

The outbreak of World Battle Two, with the inevitable ensuing abandonment of that season, put paid to any such desires and, because it transpired, to Barnett’s enjoying profession.

Regardless of this, his legendary standing at Vicarage Highway had been cemented by 163 targets in all competitions, 144 of these inside his 395 league appearances. These remained membership information till Duncan Welbourne overtook his appearances document within the mid-Nineteen Seventies, and Luther Blissett his goalscoring one within the late Nineteen Eighties.

After the Battle, Tommy discovered himself within the centre of the motion in the course of the Speedway increase as masseur for the Wembley Lions staff on the outdated Empire Stadium. After a subsequently transient stint working in Australia, he returned to Watford and often attended at Vicarage Highway for the rest of his life. He died aged 77 within the 1986 close-season, reportedly en path to gathering his season ticket.