WHERE ARE THEY NOW : DAVE WATSON

Jon Culley
Tuesday 07 March 1995 00:02 GMT
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A long and distinguished career earned winners' medals in both the League Cup (with Manchester City) and FA Cup (with Sunderland) for the England centre-half, Dave Watson, who gained 48 of his 65 caps after he had turned 30, the last, in 1982, when he was nearly 36. So successfully did he defy the ageing process that when his namesake, then of Norwich and now Everton, made his England debut on the 1984 tour of South America, also at centre-half, some assumed it was the old Watson winning a recall.

Watson Snr retired a year later. A one-time farm labourer who turned to football after being made redundant as an electrician, he has since established a successful career as a business consultant, introducing firms to potential clients. "When I was in Manchester, I used to arrange tickets for people and make introductions and I realised it was something I was good at," he said.

Recently he has added a new and rapidly-expanding dimension to his work, producing historical wall charts in conjunction with sports sponsors. "They can show the history of a sport, or of an event itself. We did one, for example, with Castrol, for the Formula One Grand Prix series, producing 650,000 charts," he said.

"There is a lot of work involved but it suits me because I love to be busy. Accuracy is paramount, of course. I'm a stickler for detail and I employ a full-time researcher who checks everything 13 times."

Now 48, he lives in Nottingham, his home town, with his wife, Penny, who is practice manager for a law firm, and 17-year-old daughter, Gemma, the youngest of three children. The family are members of St Giles Church, in West Bridgford.

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