The globe trotting career of former Wolves defender Stuart Watkiss

He was just 17, but performed well in the heart of the defence in a 0-0 draw against Sunderland in the First Division.

Over the four decades since, Watkiss has been, to coin a phrase, much-travelled.

His playing career took him not too far, to Walsall, and a little bit further, to Mansfield.

His coaching and managerial roots were initially set down at Mansfield, at more northern outposts such as Grimsby and Hull and then, well, Malta, Bangladesh and both Western and Eastern India. It’s been a nomadic existence!

And now? Earlier this year Watkiss returned to the English game as assistant manager at Eastbourne Borough in National League South, supporting boss Adam Murray, to whom he handed his debut as an 18-year-old during his spell with Mansfield.

There is no international break for Eastbourne. On Tuesday night, they were away at Truro in Cornwall, in a game which was abandoned around the hour mark due to a serious injury. This Saturday, they will be at Slough. Watkiss still lives in Grimsby, making for a five-hour commute just to get to training.

But he doesn’t mind. Football is in the blood.

“It’s a privilege,” he insists.

“Football isn’t like a job - I drive five hours down to Eastbourne and it doesn’t feel like I am driving to work, I am driving to football.

“For me, getting back to work was important, it’s far better than sitting at home and banging my head against a brick wall.

“We’re in a relegation dogfight at Eastbourne but I’m really enjoying it – it’s a lovely club with lovely people.”

This wandering and eventful footballing journey, whose current port of call is the South Coast of England, has rarely been a straightforward one.

Spells in and out of the game, successes and disappointments, several years when he gave it up completely, and times, by his own admission, of serious self-doubt and poor mental health.

Watkiss though is one of life’s fighters – hence why he is still travelling from one end of the country to the other to coach - and why, at 57, he is still hoping for one more crack at a managerial job, a project and a challenge, before calling time on life in the dugout.

The Wednesfield massive are made of stern stuff, and Watkiss’s personality and love of football was honed by a childhood spent on the Molineux terraces and then junior football including, alongside another who made it Wolves in Joe Jackson, several years with Wolverhampton Schools.

From the age of about five, he would attend Wolves games with his Dad and older brother, and developed heroes in Kenny Hibbitt and John Richards.

As a 16-year-old, he spent a year playing for Willenhall Town alongside training with Wolves, before then joining effectively the second year of the YTS scheme at Molineux.

Within the youth ranks, Watkiss is one of so many to have benefitted from the cocktail of incessant motivation and tough love delivered by coach Frank Upton.

“Frank was absolutely fantastic for me, and if I say he was ‘old school’ I think people would understand,” he explains.

“I’d say old school was good school, the best school – he had traditional values and was a tough taskmaster, there was no doubt about that.

“He was a hard man to please, but you knew he was batting for you all the way and would do everything he could to help further your career.

“Off the pitch discipline was massive, and Frank was very big on us getting our jobs done to the extent that very often we would be called back late at night if something hadn’t been done properly.

“The Friday before a first team home game was always a big day as the place had to be scrubbed from top to bottom and Frank would hide three shiny pennies in the most obscure places.

“If we didn’t find those pennies while we were cleaning, then we couldn’t go home.

“Cleaning the boots was just as important, it was like army discipline, and I would clean Kenny’s, John Burridge, John Humphrey and Andy Gray.

“Imagine all that happening these days? I don’t think it would and I’m not saying you want young players cleaning the toilets or anything but I don’t think all that did us any harm – they were fantastic life lessons which have stayed with me all the way through.”

The other side to Upton, the father-figure side, was in plain sight when Watkiss was selected for his debut, that game against Sunderland back in March of 1984.

Whilst the impending debutant was enroute to the stadium, Upton called his parents to inform them he was starting, and that seats had been reserved for them, in the Directors Box.

It was the start of a momentous week for Watkiss. Hot on the heels of that debut, and a clean sheet, was a trip to face Arsenal at Highbury.