Home Ground Heroes: Troy Deeney

How many times have we all rewatched this goal on lazy, stressful or just plain disappointing days? How many more have we gone through it in our heads? When we do, one thing we have to wait for the replay to see is Ikechi Anya’s absolutely perfect control, bringing the ball down and starting a run towards the right wing in one movement, because during the live broadcast the director chose to focus, understandably, on the keeper who’d just saved a last-minute penalty, not realising the real drama had only just begun. Anya then beats a player, and puts Fernando Forestieri in to drop a supremely accurate cross on Jonathan Hogg’s head at the far post. Hogg could easily go for goal, but decides instead to cushion a header back to the onrushing Deeney.

Let’s pause the action at this moment. From the almost certain end of our play-off chances 20 seconds earlier, Troy is now faced with an excellent chance to take us to Wembley. However, it isn’t as simple as it looks. The ball is bouncing, and Kasper Schmeichel in the Leicester goal is getting across quickly. Amid the pandemonium, it would be incredibly easy to snatch at the ball and slice it, or lean back just the merest fraction and put it over the bar. But instead, as so often, Troy took charge of the situation, showing nerve ‒ you might even say cojones ‒ and excellent technique, hitting the ball perfectly and converting a chance that most strikers should have scored, in normal circumstances, but which an awful lot wouldn’t have done in the ridiculous intensity of that particular moment.

And in that sense, of course, this goal actually sums up Troy’s contribution to Watford FC perfectly…