HERE’S a question for you. How does a man who has given Cork the runaround at Croke Park and scored 3-7 in an All-Ireland club final find himself turning out in front of two men and a dog in hurling’s fourth tier competition?
Only Liam Watson can provide the answer but, as ever with a man widely regarded as one of the most naturally gifted forwards of his generation, it’s complicated.
Watson has enjoyed a colourful career for club and county, the highlight of which was his breathtaking haul in Loughgiel’s 2012 All-Ireland final victory over Coolderry. Few, if any, have come close to producing such a devastating display on as grand a stage.
Yet one day in particular provides a snapshot of Watson at his best, and his worst.
Locking horns with the mighty Cork in the 2010 All-Ireland quarter-final, he produced a master-class, firing over from here, there and everywhere, landing six points from play as Rebels star Eoin Cadogan choked on his dust.
Glowing reviews were already being penned yet, in a moment of petulance, Watson rose to the bait hung out by John Gardiner, a second yellow card forcing him to walk the line in the dying minutes with the game already gone.
“You can’t change who you are,” he says.
“Everybody has to play the game the way they play, and I was born to play the game on the edge. Tommy Walsh always played on the edge, Wayne Rooney plays soccer on the edge. Everybody’s different.”
Watson is different alright. Precociously talented, others looking from the outside in may feel he never quite achieved what he might have, despite a clutch of county and Ulster titles, as well as that prized All-Ireland medal.
His relationship with the Antrim set-up has been, typically, edgy.
He thrived under Dinny Cahill, didn’t get a look-in when Kevin Ryan came on board and returned in a blaze of glory last year, only for the ship to run aground before it had got out of the harbour.
Watson is unrepentant. He never quite felt the love from his native county but, even in spite of the Saffrons’ struggles in recent years, turning out in the unlikely surrounds of the Lory Meagher Cup for Warwickshire was never part of the script.
Now 34, he has embraced the challenge, firing over 4-40 in just four games during the National League as the Ragged Staff county secured promotion from Division 3B. In their Meagher Cup opener on Saturday he scored 2-8 against Cavan.
Yet there was still something strange about seeing a man who was nominated for an Allstar seven years ago running out at an almost empty Kingspan Breffni Park last Saturday to face a Breffni outfit playing its first game of senior hurling in six years.
Watson doesn’t think of it that way – he believes he’s in bonus territory as, in the weeks after Loughgiel’s Ulster club final defeat to Slaughtneil last October, the decision had been made to call time on his hurling days.
“We got beat in the Ulster final, I was taken off, I wasn’t happy about being taken off, I didn’t see the reason for me being taken off.
“I don’t know, I just lost heart in the whole thing. I was going to quit - I was really upset for a good month after it.
“I told my mother and father about six weeks after the game, when the dust settled, that I wasn’t hurling any more. They asked me to take a bit of time but I already had -I’d made up my mind. I wasn’t happy with my situation.
“I just got to the stage where, the way the game was going, it was so serious, you couldn’t even enjoy going to training any more. The fun factor had gone out of it. I just wasn’t happy and maybe that showed in my performances.
“I felt I’d had enough. I was just after buying a new scrambler, I do the bike racing, so I was happy to just start that up and try and get competitive in it and just forget about the hurling.”
Word soon got about that Watson was hanging up his hurl, prompting an out of the blue phone call from a representative of Warwickshire asking if he fancied a bit of joinery work across the water, as well as the chance to reignite his hurling career.
After some initial hesitancy, he agreed to give it a go and, as the stats suggest, he hasn’t looked back since.
“I went to the first session in late January and there was a lot of boys who were there to hurl and when they went home, they never mentioned the hurling. It wasn’t a bad way, and I actually came to enjoy it,” said Watson, is based in Coventry during the working week and will feature against Sligo today.
“We’ve gone well, and I’d love to try and get Warwickshire promoted up into the Nicky Rackard and Christy Ring. We talk about trying to promote hurling - if we could do that with a wee English team, it’d be a great achievement.”
It seems like a lifetime ago since the Antrim saga of this time last year. Watson says he has watched their progress with interest and is “delighted to see them going well”.
Supremely confident in his own ability, he still believes he had plenty to offer the Saffron cause but, insists Watson, there are no hard feelings about how things ended.
“Look, Antrim are going well and I don’t want to be saying anything about them. It started off well and it ended up a disaster, but that’s the way it goes. It is what it is.
“The reality is Antrim never wanted me. The only time I’ve been asked on was when PJ O’Mullan came into the set-up, the rest of the management teams have never invited me on to the panel.
“I always get bad mouthed about not going to play for Antrim – I haven’t been invited so for me to just go and express myself and play hurling and actually enjoy it, it was Warwickshire who invited me to go and play for them.
“People ask why am I playing for Warwickshire, if somebody down south had asked me – Kilkenny, Tipperary, Cork, Dublin or any of those teams – I’d have gone there.
“But Warwickshire has put a smile back on my face, and I’m actually enjoying my hurling again.”
