Surprisingly it took until October 1984 until we met Leeds in a competitive game. Since then we've played them 13 times, winning 5, drawing 3 and losing 5, scoring 19 goals and conceding 15. Our biggest win was in that first meeting, a 4-0 away victory in the Third Round of the Milk Cup, as the League Cup was then. What a quant sponsorship idea that now seems (although it pleasingly lives on in Northern Ireland). Our biggest loss was in our penultimate away fixture of our 99/2000 Premiership season when we lost 3-1 at Elland Road.
In the six games we've played up there we've won 2, drawn 1 and lost 3. The other win was in the old Division 2 when Steve Harrison's Watford came away with a 1-0 victory thanks to a Glyn Hodges goal.
Our only other cup meeting was the glorious 2-1 victory over Eric Cantona's reigning top flight champions in 1992. Again, in the 3rd Round of the League Cup (it had swapped milk for Coca-Cola by then) David Holdsworth headed in from a free kick and Jason Drysdale converted a penalty to earn us probably the most impressive win of the Perryman era.
Little should need to be said about our last meeting against Leeds and if you don't know why, you're probably someone who stumbled across this site by searching for 'watford' and 'prostitution' on Google (I slightly regret posting that article about the Stanford Super Series).
Leeds start to the season sounds impressive as they've won all five games so far. However when you then hear that these were against Exeter, Darlington, Wycombe, Walsall and Tranmere it isn't quite so eye-opening.
There are plenty of mutual friends between the sides but of the current squads only Danny Graham has played for both sides before, going on loan to Leeds for three games when he was at Middlesbrough. Former 'Orns midfielder Neil Redfearn is currently Leeds United's Under 18 coach.
