When he made his debut for Manchester City in August 1975, Dave Watson was experiencing top-flight football for the first time at the age of 29. Yet he had already won 14 caps for England, the first of them at the age of 27, and had started their last 12 matches as their centre-back. That late development can largely be explained by managers wanting to play him as a striker. In 1971-72, he top-scored for Second Division Sunderland, ever-present at No.9. But when Bob Stokoe took over, in November 1972, he made Watson his No.5. Not that this kept Dave out of the goals: he joint top-scored in an FA Cup-run that culminated in Sunderland’s famous 1973 win v Leeds.

When he made his Southampton debut, six years on from that Wembley romance, he had just won his 46th cap. He was grateful, he told Ian Carnaby in a 2005 match-day interview, to Lawrie McMenemy for “rescuing” him from a “brief, unhappy stay” in the Bundesliga. He had been obliged to go abroad when Malcolm Allison returned to Maine Road, determined to rejuvenate an ageing squad. But the chairman had no wish to sell his 31 year-old centre-back to an English competitor. 

Dave settled into a regular partnership with Chris Nicholl for a couple of seasons and the caps continued to mount up. He was “very happy” at The Dell, until early in the 1981-82 season. As he struggled to get fit for a European qualifier, he took exception to McMenemy’s suggestion that he was putting country before club. But, as he put it to Carnaby, “you don’t cross” McMenemy. When Lawrie told him that he was “going with Malcolm Waldron,” that was that. Reckoning that his international ambitions depended upon his playing First Division football, he left for Stoke, where he won two more caps, creating a record – since equalled by Peter Shilton– of being capped for England while on the books of five different clubs.

At 5ft 11ins and a bit, he was not the tallest of centre-backs. He reckoned never to “miss much in the air,” though, and was fast across the ground. But “the main thing,” he claimed “was concentration.” Although his Dell days “ended acrimoniously,”

Dave insists that, “of all my clubs, Southampton was the only one I did not want to leave.”

After Stoke, he continued to make up for all that time lost in his 20s, by playing on into his 40s at non-league Kettering, after finishing his League career back at Meadow Lane, where it had all begun. He has remained in Nottingham, where his DWI Ltd (Dave Watson International) has become a major operation with access to hundreds of former international footballers, across Europe. The agency sets up personal appearances, plus photo and media opportunities, working both with the FA and UEFA and with major football sponsors, such as Nike, Sky and McDonald’s. And talking of Big Macs, Dave is back on speaking terms with Lawrie. In February 2020 his wife, Penny released a statement to the PA news agency to the effect that her husband had been diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease that “was most likely” brought on by head injuries and repeated heading of a ball. She added that he had good days and bad days but his memory and coordination had suffered.