Why WO feels it’s in best interest of all we attend Watford forum

However, in less than a week that is exactly what will happen. It is easily the most significant off-field event at Vicarage Road since the owner arrived more than a decade ago.

For any fan of the club, this is something you would ideally like to attend – and if not attend, certainly be able to follow in some form or another.

As a local newspaper at the heart of the town for 140 years, the Watford Observer has followed every match, transfer, controversy and success since Watford FC was formed. Through the ups and the downs, we’ve been there.

We believe it’s our job to be the eyes, ears, mouthpiece and occasionally the ombudsman for the fans when they can’t be there themselves.

The Watford Observer sees it as its duty to ask the fans the questions would ask, report professionally and fairly about what the club is doing, and to do so as quickly, accurately and efficiently as possible.

But we can’t attend next week’s fan event with the owner and chairman. The supporters organising it have decided not to invite the media.

The Watford Observer believes that by making their decision, the organisers run the risk of undermining all their tremendous hard work by tripping at the last hurdle.

By not being transparent and open, and allowing some form of coverage during the forum – as well as delaying the reporting of the event as a whole – the organisers run the risk of the evening being seen as a sanitised event that benefits the few at the cost of the vast majority.

That was exactly what the club was criticised for just over a year ago when they hosted an ‘invite only’ event for bloggers, podcasters and vloggers, the contents of which were not made public until some time later.

Unless those fans fortunate to be in the room next week have their phones taken from them, their pockets emptied, asked to sign non-disclosure agreements and are then handcuffed, information from the meeting will creep out. It could even happen during it.

By not having an official, independent, trusted source of information available on the night, there will now be a huge temptation for those attending to simply tweet or post in forums what they see and hear. It’s one-upmanship, bragging rights, I told you first – call it what you like. We all know it happens.

The club have, by making the owner available to meet fans face-to-face for the first time ever, created a platform for direct dialogue like never before. They did what they felt best, and handed over the decisions around format, attendees and sharing of information to recognised groups of supporters.

To be fair to those groups, they have done a highly commendable job of pulling the event together, organising the allocation of spaces and liaising with the club over the whole thing.

And unless it was held inside the stadium at Vicarage Road, the likelihood of being able to accommodate all those who would like to attend is slim. And that’s before you consider the many overseas supporters etc.

It has to be said, recognised and applauded that they have done what would have been considered impossible even a year ago – created an opportunity for fans to be in a room with the owner and chairman, and ask them questions.

Notwithstanding all that, though, this has to be something that offers the best access achievable to as many fans as possible. It can’t be that the 99.9% of fans not at London Colney on Thursday are relying upon furtively tweeted messages or having to wait another 24 hours to find out what went on.

Allowing that to happen will undermine the efforts that have been made to get this far, and leave the whole event open to question, doubt and criticism. Before it’s even started.

Let’s be clear: The Watford Observer wants this event so succeed. It is in all our interests to have a club that communicates with fans, and fans who feel connected to their football team.

The idea of an audio recording the next day just makes it very hard to truly report what went on. Imagine trying to write a match report by listening to a recording of the commentary. You need to be able to see faces, read body language, sense the mood in the room.

And it’s not as if the media pack that follows Watford is big. In fact, it’s probably one of the smallest in the Championship. It’s pretty much the WO, The Athletic and BBC Three Counties. All professional organisations who know how to cover such an event, know to cut out the expletives, understand that a very occasional piece of information may need to be excluded for commercial or personal reasons.

It seems unbelievable that the owner and chairman would feel less liberated when answering questions if one, two or all three were in the room – especially as the organisers will be recording the whole event and sharing it the next day online anyway.

A live blog, because it is typed in real time, will never be a full transcript. But it will provide an indication of the questions, answers and discussions as it happens (and still allow for anything particularly sensitive or unsavoury to be omitted).

It will give an essence of what is happening for those not there – in the same way we have a live blog for matches and even on transfer deadline day.

A Watford Observer blog is free to access – anyone can see it. And it stays online, so if you miss it live you can catch up with it later.

That would provide a bridge between the haves, in the room, and the have nots everywhere else. It would also render the surreptitious tweeting of the night’s events rather pointless, and make it far more reasonable and palatable to wait for the fuller coverage the next day.

We’ve tried to put ourselves in the shoes of other supporters. We are attempting to be empathetic to Watford fans all over the world.

We believe if you can’t be there in person, you’d want the next best experience and opportunity to follow what’s happening. That shouldn’t mean waiting 24 hours, or relying upon the odd tweet or forum post from those typing with their phones tucked away on their laps.

We must stress, this decision around media access is not influenced by the club in any way at all. Other than confirming the availability of the protagonists, agreeing a date and providing a venue, they have left the facilitation of the evening to the fans.

So before anyone starts rounding on Pozzo or Duxbury, the Watford Observer must step forward and defend them to prevent presumptions to the contrary being made.

As things stand, there will no coverage of the fans’ forum on the night. The first in-depth professional coverage will come almost 24 hours later.

You might say that, having waited 10 years, another few hours won’t hurt. And that would be true, if it were the same for everyone. Yet it’s not. A small group of fans will hear everything first.

Which is why what the club tried to do last time out failed. And which is why they have given the fans a chance to do it differently.

What could be an event as transparent and inclusive as circumstances and space restraints allow runs the risk of turning into something as easy to criticise as the one which went before it.

The Watford Observer doesn’t want that to happen, which is why we’re speaking up now.