It is 40 years since Wednesfield-born defender Stuart Watkiss ran out at Molineux to live out every Wolves fan’s dream of turning out for their beloved home-town club.
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.
Up against Charlie Nicholas, Tony Woodcock and Paul Mariner, it was never going to be easy, and Watkiss conceded a penalty as Wolves lost 4-1.
But it was another footballing experience crossed off, and the then England boss Bobby Robson actually sought him out post-match to congratulate him on his performance.
They were to prove the only two senior appearances of Watkiss’s career at Wolves – but no one can ever take them away.
“Making my debut for the club I always supported was incredible and something I will never forget,” he recalls.
“It was such a fantastic day, although I will never forget Frank again, after the game when I’d got my suit on and was strolling down the old corridor at Molineux towards the players’ lounge.
“’Where are you going?’, he asked me, and after telling him, ‘not until you’ve done your jobs,’ was the reply, handing me a brush.
“I had to go and clean the Sunderland dressing room, and a few of the lads who I had played against who were still in there had a little chuckle, but it was just another life lesson as I was finding my way.
“And then going and playing against Arsenal, and those front players, I did give away a penalty but felt I did o-k generally and to get the England manager come and say, ‘well done’, was certainly a standout moment.”
That was, however, to prove as good as it got for Watkiss at Wolves.
It wasn’t just Upton but manager Graham Hawkins and assistant and later caretaker boss Jim Barron who played a significant – if no-nonsense – part in his early development.
But when that trio were all deemed surplus to requirements over a short space of time, and Tommy Docherty arrived, for Watkiss, things went downhill.
“I have to admit I lost my way a little bit after that,” he admits.
“I thought I had made it by getting into the team, and once those three guys left, all my mentors had gone.
“Tommy Docherty came in who wasn’t a great manager for me, and I also picked up an injury in pre-season which didn’t help.
“It is all down to me and I have to take accountability for losing focus as, first and foremost, you are always responsible for your own actions.
“But I do also think that even if just one of those three guys had stayed at the club, they would have kept me in line.
“As it was, for Wolves it was the start of the downward spiral, and for me, I was out the door about nine months after making my debut, which was very tough to take.”
Watkiss had a short spell on trial at Walsall, and several appearances in a short stay with Crewe, but admits he was ‘going through the motions’.
Sapped of motivation and stung by his Molineux exit, Watkiss turned his back on football completely, not kicking a ball for two years before returning to play with friends at a local level, purely for enjoyment.
And then, and indeed for the rest of his career to now, interactions with other figures who had – or would go on to have – their own Wolves’ history, pushed him back into football.
In later life, a certain Ryan Bennett was among several young players who benefitted from working with Watkiss in the early stages of their careers, a list also featuring Tom Cairney, Liam Cooper, Liam Lawrence and Conor Townsend.
And as he returned to football, it was former Wolves wing wizard Terry Wharton who got Watkiss back playing on a Saturday, for Wednesfield Social, alongside turning out for Wednesfield Conservative Club in division five of the Wolverhampton Sunday League.
But an even greater impact was just around the corner, as one of his boyhood heroes effectively came to the rescue, and, without fear of exaggeration, ‘changed his life’.
Watkiss was head and shoulders above everyone at the level he was operating at, eventually moved upwards to spend several happy years at Rushall, combined with initially working at his Dad’s post office in Low Hill and then behind the counter at the main post office in Wolverhampton.
But after impressing for Rushall in a pre-season friendly against Walsall, he was invited to turn out for the Saddlers against Telford several days later, after which he was immediately offered a two-year contract.
At 27, he had been offered a second chance in football, which he gleefully accepted, albeit handing in his resignation at a job he had enjoyed working for the Post Office.
The Walsall manager who gave him that second chance, and revitalised his footballing career?
Kenny Hibbitt.
“Kenny was incredible for me,” Watkiss enthuses.
“I’d loved watching him anyway as a Wolves fan, but getting the chance to then play for him and get to know him was incredible.
“He was a fantastic footballer, but he’s also a fantastic man, and to be honest, him giving me that chance at Walsall changed my life.
“It has given me another 30 years involved in football, and so many great experiences, and if that hadn’t happened, who knows where I might have ended up?”
Watkiss spent three years as a player with the Saddlers, later enjoying a similar spell at Mansfield where his only goal was set up by another Wulfrunian in Ben Sedgemore, before heading into the world of coaching and management.
His greatest success came with Mansfield, progressing from youth coach to eventually managing the team to their first promotion in ten years, added to nurturing the progression of so much young talent in those other roles, notably at Hull and Grimsby.
There have also been difficult times, particularly a year at Kidderminster Harriers about which he insists he will never reveal what exactly was going on behind the scenes.
But in amongst it have come some incredible life experiences, the chance to taste many new cultures and traditions, and opportunities and journeys he would never have made without football.
Watkiss has worked as head coach with Bharat in India and as assistant to Aidy Boothroyd in the Indian Super League with Jamshedpur, in between which came a managerial role with Naxxar Lions in Malta, and as assistant coach to Jamie Day, in international football with Bangladesh.
“The two spells in India gave me proper life experiences and were pretty spectacular,” he explains.
“Football is still developing over there with foreign coaches and players heading over but the lads from India are getting better all the time.
“It’s a fantastic product with every game live on TV and all the analysis you could need, and they just need a few more people going through the turnstiles.
“Bangladesh was very different again, offering the chance to work at international level and go to countries I would never have had the chance to visit otherwise.
“We did a full World Cup qualifying campaign, even if we were the equivalent of San Marino in our group, and had the experience of playing India in Calcutta in front of a crowd of 77,000.
“The players both in India and Bangladesh are so respectful and good to work with, and striving to get better.
“They were great experiences, but I was away for about eight years in total which made it very difficult to get back on the merry-go-round back over here.”
Eventually however, opportunity knocked, and, despite having thoroughly enjoyed working for and learning from Premier League managers including Boothroyd, Nigel Pearson and Phil Brown, Watkiss rates Eastbourne boss Murray as potentially among the very best.
“I think Adam is the most natural coach I have seen, a special talent,” he says.
Who knows what the future holds for Watkiss, whose two sons Ben and Danny are both working within football.
He will, no doubt, sit down with Murray and Eastbourne at the end of the season to evaluate the situation, not least given that ever-so-lengthy commute.
The two clubs where he would one day have loved to return in a coaching role would have been Walsall and Wolves – of whom he remains a passionate fan and huge advocate of the job being delivered by Gary O’Neil.
Even if those particular ships have probably sailed, Watkiss would love just one more crack at life as a number one, at whatever level, but with a project and challenge that he could really get his teeth into.
“I am well aware that I am probably coming to the twilight of my career, but that just makes me even more determined and grateful that I am still working,” he reveals.
“I don’t know what the future holds, and the spells away become more difficult as time goes on.
“There will come a day when just maybe it will be football calling time on me rather than me calling time on football, but I’d love to have one more crack at it.
“Bringing people together as a team, working with players, that is something I still really enjoy and get a massive buzz when I see people on television who I worked with earlier in their careers.
“But I am equally proud of those who have gone on and achieved in other areas, away from football.
“I’m not going to lie, there have been times when I have been out of work when I have really suffered with my mental health.
“I can quickly lose feelings of self-worth and self-respect, and have a downer on myself.
“I remember during one of those times I received a message on Linkedin from someone who hadn’t made it in football, but had gone on to do really well in the financial industry.
“He contacted me completely out of the blue to say he wanted to let me know about the positive effect I had on his life, how he took away my work ethic and personality and how much I demanded success.
“I don’t mind saying it’s a message that made me cry.
“The reason players made it in football or in life wasn’t down to me, it’s down to them, but it’s nice just to think I may have played just a small part in their journey and development.
“That’s why I’d love just one more go at management in this country, and the level doesn’t really matter, it’s more the nature of the project.
“With all the experiences I have picked up, and people I have worked with, I still think I have something to offer and the drive and determination to succeed.
“Will that opportunity come up? We’ll just have to wait and see.”
Watkiss speaks with complete clarity, passion, enthusiasm and a love of the game which continues to shine through, and will be there again at Slough’s Arbour Park on Saturday afternoon.
Forty years on from making his debut in gold and black on a memorable Molineux afternoon, this is one Wolf who still has the hunger to be leading a pack.