Hornets to quit Reserve League

Watford Reserve Team will quit the Combination League at the end of the current season, it was announced at last nights AGM.

The aim is to increase the standard of opposition the younger players face by taking on Premier League sides in behind-closed-door friendlies.

Chairman Graham Taylor, who was incidentally re-elected at last nights meeting said:

"We are withdrawing our Reserve team out of that league. We will continue to play reserve team football but it will be in private and the odd one will be played at Vicarage Road, as Saracens are now leaving, to give them experience.

"Reserve team football has been falling away a great deal for a long time. It doesn`t mean it is going to stop here but what happens now is a lot of teams play in the afternoons, there is no age restriction, you can play whatever team you like so if first team players are coming back then they can play."

Chief Executive Julian Winter revealed that the club had been discussing the decision ever-since the appointment of Malky Mackay over a year ago:

"It has been an ongoing debate ever since Malky took over as manager, last year he decided he wanted to stick with it because the group needed to be exposed to competitive games and we were not 100 per cent sure we could provide that then.

"The Reserve league quality has diminished and we are now confident we can find better quality for our players to play against.

"We are confident now in the relationships we have with some of the higher level clubs that will happily play our reserves on a regular basis and provide our players with competition.

"The key thing is the players need to be exposed to competition against quality which stretches them."

Surely any teams that make Liam Henderson look good, i.e. Stevenage Reserves, can't be of sufficient quality to face the Hornet's young guns.

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