Critique on web a pointer for Watts

JACK Watts could see his exit from Melbourne coming.

The former No.1 draft pick believes an article posted on the club’s website quoting captain Nathan Jones about Watts’s performance was a warning sign, and said that, combined with other factors, led to him choosing Port Adelaide as his destination.

“If your own club is putting that up on its website, it makes it pretty difficult, doesn’t it?” he said. “[There were] a few little warning signs. It is probably for the best for both parties to move on.

“It was not just one thing that you can put your finger on and say, ‘that’s why’. I think it was a bit to do with my style of play and a bit to do with certain perceptions, a bit to do with that fact that I am one of the very few still around from those dark days.

“I think they want to move on from that a little bit, which I can understand. At the end of the day, you move on and make the best of the situation.”

Watts was traded to Port Adelaide for pick 31 on Monday. Before joining his new teammates, he flew to Central America yesterday to meet his girlfriend and will then spend a week in Montreal.

“It [footy] is not my life,” he said. “Being a good person, treating people with respect and trying to be a kind, [welcoming] person is more important — I guess it hasn’t helped me much in the football industry.

“I am pretty proud of how I have held myself, going through what I have and looking at the support I have received over the past few weeks I can see how many people I’ve had an effect on and that makes me pretty proud.”

He also said there was “no doubt” his disastrous debut against Collingwood in 2007 had come too soon.