I sat in front of the television last Thursday afternoon, aware of incipient pleasure conflicting with shock and sadness as I tried to come to terms with the devastating news. One after another the tributes were paraded through the Sky coverage and all of it was positive: reverential, warm and admiring.

I noted people who I would not have put down as being in his camp and possibly indulging in a touch of hypocrisy, enthuse over his career and achievements. I found it almost uplifting amidst the onset of my own depression; so much so that the fleeting thought passed through my mind, to phone Graham and compare notes.

It was then that it hit me: we will not talk again.

The man, who never restricted himself to ten words if there were another 500 lying idle, would never speak to me again. That is hard because he has been there, only a phone call away for the past 39 years. We had kept in regular touch, during his brilliant and inspired stewardship of Watford; his time with Aston Villa, his roller-coaster ride with England, then Wolves, before the Second Coming to Vicarage Road and on through his ultimate retirement.

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I knew Graham better than many and, as far as journalists were concerned, I knew better than most, if not all journalists, better than most. We were not dinner-party friends – we sent Christmas greetings but did not exchange birthday cards. He knew our daughters’ names but we were not alone in that, for he had an unerring knack for remembering the names of so many wives, husbands and children, I mention this as I won privileged access to Graham, not through friendship but trust. The friendship grew from that.

The Sky coverage underpinned the fact Graham Taylor was far more than an exceptional, innovative football coach and inspirational manager with a landscape-changing community vision: he was one of the nicest human beings you could ever wish to meet. Warm, funny, with a fund of anecdotes, Graham was also capable of lampooning himself, frequently referring to himself in the third person. “I said to myself: ’you better watch it Graham. You could be in trouble on this one.’”

He always had time to talk, to inquire into the health or the length of service of anyone he met: be it office cleaner or member of the FA. He was down to earth and charming. I wondered sometimes, from where he got the mental energy. As Steve Bruce observed: “His humanity was outstanding.”

There were tributes to his dedication, his love of the game, which was his passion. The fact he cared for his charges; his commitment to an extreme work-ethic and his undoubted honesty and sincerity were listed as qualities that earned him the reputation as a real gentleman of the game.

I knew I would have to write an appreciation, which I dreaded - feeling inadequate to the task. How can you sum up Graham in 1,000 words? When I asked Ian Bolton what Graham meant to him, he summed up our mutual feelings: “How long have you got?”

Hearing the tributes and knowing them to be true, I felt good for Graham on the day he had died because over the last 30 months I detected a few negative vibes had crept into his life. He had long been considering a move back to Kings Langley and south west Herts, which he undertook last autumn. “I pointed out to Rita that is one area where they appear to quite like me,” he told me with a chuckle. But were they just jesting words?

A year back, I had left many messages and sent a number of emails trying to contact him but he appeared to have gone to earth. Eventually, after blitzing his home phone, mobile and email address one morning, he phoned back.

“I told Rita ‘I am going to phone him because he appears to quite like me’,” he told me – in itself an indication of his mind-set.

He had withdrawn and had taken very few calls: “It’s not just you,” he said. The possible trigger for this had been the fading out of his role as co-commentator for the radio. Add this to the melange of disappointment at the way the game was heading; the increasing possession-based frustration of Louis Van Gaal-type football that proliferates; along with the nagging memory of his failure as England manager, which he never fully put behind him. I can understand the sentiments.

I suggested he was having difficulty in coming to terms with being “yesterday’s man”; having gone through the same mental hoop some years earlier. Silence followed before the voice down the phone said: “That is just it. You understand as we are of a similar age.”

I suggested he wrote his book for he was an expert of his own “yesterday” and he was embarking on it with help from an ex-colleague, the last time I inquired.

In recent years, he was knocked over when cycling by a lady driver and retained sufficient joking chauvinism to hint the sex of the offender might have been significant.

Subsequently he had a knee operation that was not a success and he lost the ability to jog or cycle. More seriously he stumbled and fell when undertaking a charity-opening event in his home-town of Scunthorpe. He was rushed to hospital.

“I came with in a millimetre or two of sustaining a fatal injury,” he told my wife, a former nursing sister, going into medical details.

The last time he called, she answered the phone, greeted him and inquired after his health. “I’m not right, Ellie. I’m not blooming right,” replied Graham.

Indeed we do focus on yesteryear at such times and I had thought much about those past days when he put the town, not just the club, on the map, Elton rightly had a stand named after him and Graham, much to his intense gratitude, had one too.

“It is good they remember,’ said Graham, the man who once said in 1977: “I want people in years to come to reflect on the good days and say that was when Graham Taylor was there.”

The stand being named after him ensures there is a permanent memorial to him but then again, all of us who witnessed those days, or a section of them from 1977 to 2001, will not need concrete and iron to remind us. We have those memories, which seared into our delighted and often gob-smacked brains and they will never be forgotten.

An unlikely source somehow hit it on the head for me when Paul Merson stressed what Graham Taylor achieved at Watford will never be repeated or matched anywhere.

“His was a blinding, outstanding achievement and anyone in Watford, who doesn’t appreciate that, knows nothing about football.”

Well Mers’, happily there are very few of those around these parts.

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