A long trip to Cobh is no comparison to Jamie Watson's footballing travels

Finn Harps have their longest journey of the season on Friday when they make their way south to Cobh Ramblers, and while travelling can take its toll on many players, it has never for one second frustrated Jamie Watson, and his record shows that. 

The Scottish player signed for the Donegal side in June 2023, but by then the 24-year-old already had a large travel CV built up. 

Born and raised on the east coast of Scotland in the village of Kirkcaldy, Watson played his entire underage career with Raith Rovers before progressing into the senior setup where he would remain for four seasons before making his first big journey across the Atlantic. 

Ending up at a club in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia called Cape Breton University may not have been part of the plan, but the Scottish defender learned long ago to stop looking for the predictable and to chase his own path. 

“I started with Raith Rovers, which is my local club in Scotland, from when I was 10, and I ended up playing four years with them at senior level,” Watson said. 

“Once Covid hit I felt everything was up in the air with my future, I wasn’t featuring in the team too often, and before all that, I was flirting with the idea of travelling and going on a pro-scholarship abroad anyway.  

“So, in the end I started looking into it again and I decided to go to Canada, the team there offered me a good education and had a great program in terms of developing players.  

“We talk about making the long journey to Cobh this weekend, but when I was in Canada, our closest game was three hours away and our furthest game we had to go by plane, so you can say a bus journey or whatever, to Cobh isn’t an issue,” Watson laughed. 

“Football takes you on many different journeys. Cape Breton University, the area is a bit like Finn Harps in that it’s at the top of the country, it’s a bit remote area, so when I ended up in Ballybofey, it wasn’t a huge culture shock, I just got hooked to the area straight away.” 

Last year a call from then Harps boss Dave Rodgers to Watson’s former Raith Rovers manager Barry Smith, with whom the two coaches played with each other at Dundee, landed the 24-year-old back in the British Isles where he has become a mainstay in the Donegal club’s defence. 

And while his debut season in Ireland saw Harps fall to one of their worst seasons in recent times, it never for one second impacted Watson’s decision to leave. 

“As I said I love being here, it was an unfortunate year last season, but I wanted to stay. To be honest, I think Darren Murphy was the biggest reason I opted to continue with Harps this year and it’s been going great ever since. 

And while Harps sit second in the First Division table, they hope to regain their winning formula after suffering their second defeat of the season last week at the hands of Athlone Town. 

“It was a disappointing result last week because we’ve been actually very good on the road recently, in a way we just didn’t turn up in the first half and it took us until the second half to wake up and start playing football,” Watson concluded. 

“That’s been an issue for us in most of the games where we’ve dropped points, it’s been down to not playing for the full 90 minutes in games, so we need to write a few wrongs and get back on track. 

“When we played Cobh a few weeks ago, we had our homework done on them, but they ended up playing differently to how we expected, and in fairness they were probably the better team overall and deserved the win. 

“It took us until the second half again that week to switch on and play, we have to stop doing that and play quality football for 90 minutes, that is the aim this weekend.”