Welcome to the “Tour Of The 72” series – Watford FC, where I attempt to visit every EFL ground to find the greatest football experience there is to offer and rate each ground on five different factors: Pricing, Atmosphere & Quality of the game, Food, Facilities and the overall experience of the matchday. For this edition, I quickly scrambled to Vicarage Road, home of Watford FC for their Sky Bet Championship fixture against Middlesbrough FC on the 1st of November 2025, to review my matchday experience. This was a new ground tick for me, so how does it rate it compare to their fellow Championship sides?
Pricing & Ticketing 3/10
Originally, I planned to sit in The Rookery Stand behind the goal, where a majority of the atmosphere is created, however I left it too late to purchase said tickets, so opted for the Sir Elton John Stand (a Watford legend), as there was a vast array of available seats. An adult ticket set me back £38, the exact same price I ended up paying in my last Championship groundhop at Ipswich Town, slightly above average for an adult ticket, but undoubtably nowhere near the most expensive Championship ticket I have ever seen.
On the other hand, there was one serious distinguished problem with my experience, being the ticketing websites’ difficulty. Overall, it took my good friend who I made the journey with spent over one whole hour wrestling with their website and ticket office on the phone, causing plenty of frustration (even at one point debating calling the trip off), due to the hassle of sending the tickets to a digital wallet and needing supporter IDs to access the QR code.
In terms of the actual seat itself, the view of the pitch was faultless, no restricted view at all, although the smaller area where I was located lacked a roof, which wasn’t ideal in the rain (albeit likely my fault for getting tickets there without the weather forecast). Another slight negative relating to pricing is the inflated prices of food inside the stadium, which felt steep for a football stadium, but perhaps expected for a club surrounding London, where everything seems a rip-off!
Atmosphere 8.5/10
Watford FC aren’t particularly renowned for their atmosphere, often being seen as one of the weaker sets of supporters by rival Championship clubs, however, as a first-time visitor, I have to say I was beyond impressed with the noise created from the Rookery Stand, home to Watford’s more rowdy fans.
First off I’m going to give credit to the Middlesbrough supporters, who packed out their allocated away end and continued to produce some noise even after the game was done and dusted, and heading for a bleak away day result, it’s certainly not a short journey home for them!
Watford certainly had an incentive to create an enhanced atmosphere, due to their strong dislike towards Middlesbrough gaffer Rob Edwards, who guided their fierce rivals Luton Town to promotion to the Premier League three seasons ago as well as having an unsuccessful spell at The Hornets prior. Chants such as “Edwards what’s the score” and “Javi Gracia, he’s better than you” rang through Vicarage Road after Watford comfortably saw the back of high-flying Middlesbrough.
The Rookery Stand certainly livened up, especially after Kjurrumgaard doubled his tally for the game, with even the mascot Harry the Hornet getting stuck in and banging on the supporters drum on a couple of occasions! On top of that, it seemed that all three stands housing the home supporters joined together to chant most of the time, rather than only one, which I always find a positive of a club on the up.
Food – 4.5/10
Unfortunately, the ratings come crashing down once again, as it’s fair to say the food options and pricing were severely disappointing. Outside the vicinity of Vicarage Road, there’s a plethora of local independent restaurants focusing on cuisine from varying parts of the world, but once you enter the stadium and it’s surrounding the ground’s complex, these sorts of varieties are lacking.
In the fanzone directly opposite the players entrance, there was an independent burger and hot-dog van, who’s prices were arguably quite reasonable compared to behind the turnstiles, as well as a small van selling alcoholic beverages, although I didn’t pay them a visit.
Right, so here comes my main criticism. I understand football clubs need to make their money somehow, and food inside the ground is one of them, but only providing mass produced products such as Pukka Pies and charging around a whopping £6 for them, I find absolutely outrageous. For context, I visited National League North side King’s Lynn the Saturday prior, and they charged £3 for locally sourced pies, that’s half the price!
Put off by the prices of a classic matchday pie, I scoured the area for a backup option, and was quite intrigued by a pop-up stand selling popcorn, but once noticing the prices, I was immediately put off, as £9 for a mediocre box of popcorn is silly, we’re not at the cinema lads!
Facilities 7.5/10
Vicarage Road is one of the very few remaining grounds at this level that is right in the heart of the city and community, with the city centre just a five minute walk away from the stadium, opening up options for places to eat and drink before the game, as well as the train station being around a twenty minute walk from the stadium itself.
Despite not having extensive areas around the ground to congregate, due to the surrounding houses, there’s still two fanzone areas available, one being catered more towards families and young children, with football based games as well as player meetups organised in this area, whereas the larger one is targeted quite clearly towards the beer drinkers, as plenty of benches to sit and enjoy your pint are available!
Regarding the concourses, they were relatively high-quality in terms of what was on offer, but my only minor gripe was the lack of space for queueing, it was quite a struggle to go to the toilets asking everyone to let me through the food queue and even once there, I still had to queue for plenty of minutes, nearly missing the second half kick-off!
I’m sure it doesn’t tend to be a problem, but the concourse didn’t have a full roof cover, and of course, due to the classic UK weather, the heavens poured onto the concourse making the steps down at full-time slightly slippery!
Overall Experience 7/10
To summarise quickly, I thoroughly enjoyed my afternoon of football, seeing a high-energy game of quite a high-standard (despite getting quite soggy), but a perfect ten out of ten score was ruined by a few moments.
I’m going to start with the negatives, as the positives do fortunately outnumber the negatives, and my main problem was the ticketing website which I touched on earlier, being a massive hassle to eventually receive them in a “digital wallet” as they refuse to accept physical tickets and require a “supporter ID”, which was a proper pain to sort.
The next was the arrival, as online it stated you could enter the turnstiles at 1:15 P.M, however I was unable to enter due to the arrival of both sets of coaches for the players arriving, forcing the stewards to close the entire road off. This led to quite a bit of anger from locals and supporters being unable to access this area, and Watford remain the only club I have visited that enforce this.
On the contrary however, the game itself was an absolute thriller (unless you support Middlesbrough), with an early goal from Imran Louza accelerating Watford to continue pushing on to keep adding to their advantage, and it was a nice change to see a match where there wasn’t constant stoppages and timewasting from either side, keeping the momentum of the game intact.
Tempers did get a little bit high, particularly after Watford’s third goal of the afternoon, which took a slight deflection off Kjurrumgaard’s head, who happened to be in an offside position, after Doumbia’s rocket from outside the box found it’s way into the top corner past Solomon Brynn in the Middlesbrough net.
Overall, Watford looked much the better side than Middlesbrough, despite the large gap in current league position, firing Watford to top of the league in terms of their home record, with Javi Gracia’s new-look Watford side really looking as if they had gelled together, despite his short time at the wheel with Doumbia, Baah, Louza and Vata all impressing me, although unfortunately the latter went off with a serious looking injury and I hope he recovers swiftly!
Watford 3-0 Middlesbrough
Goals – Louza 15′, Kjuremgaard 32, 49
Lineups:
Watford: Selvik, Ngakia, Keben, Pollock, Bola, Kyprianou, Louza (Kayembe 88′), Baah (Petris 77′), Vata (Ince 62′), Doumbia (Semedo 88′), Kjurremgaard (Irankunda 77′)
Middlesbrough: Brynn, Targett, Fry, Ayling, Jones (Strelec 71′), Brittain, Morris (McGree 71′), Browne, Hackney (Sene 71′), Burgzorg (Whittaker 71′), Conway (Hansen 71′)
