BACKROOM STALWARTS WATSON AND DENT TO DEPART POTTERS’ STAFF
PHYSIO Dave Watson and club doctor Dr Andrew Dent are exiting the frontline at Stoke City after a combined nearly 50 years’ service.
Watson has been a regular on the Stoke bench since 2002 and has been full-time head physio since the summer of 2003, when he was just 27.
Dr Dent has been the head of medicine since 1990, also working as the England youth teams’ doctor for 13 years up to 2005 and as a GP in Hartshill for 25 years up to 2013.
It is understood both stalwarts could take up positions at bet365.
Watson had been a decent player himself, a centre-half known as Big Dave, and had a trial for the New Zealand national team having won the national league title with Dunedin Technical and been part of the Napier City team which reached the New Zealand cup final.
But he had to retire due to injury at the age of 24 and backpacking around the world eventually brought him to England, where he has family.
He began work as a locum physio in 2000 where ports of call included the then North Staffs Hospital and Haywood Hospital, in Burslem, then work for the company which provided Stoke’s physios. He was soon recruited by Tony Pulis on a permanent basis.
“I love working back in football after playing it myself for so many years,” he said at the time. “I must admit I do get emotionally involved on the touchline during games, but I promise that you won’t hear me shouting, because I know my place.”
Watson, a keen golfer, has encountered all manner of injuries over the past 18 years and his counselling has also been appreciated by the dozens of players who have passed through the changing room in that time.
Charlie Adam recalled recently: “What kept me going (after my dad died) was the fact that I had a family, my mum, brothers, my sister was still here and I had a great wife who supported me every day.
“And the physio at Stoke, Dave Watson, was incredible.
“He got me to meet people, to go and speak to people, psychologists. It was people like that who kept me going and were there for me.
“Players can help too but as a physio he was amazing for me. He got me the right work, the right people and I really appreciate that. I managed to get back on the right path and started to enjoy my football again.”
Dr Dent, a keen pilot in his spare time who flies aerobatics, has been a fixture behind the scenes under 16 different managers at two different stadiums.
The challenges he has faced include helping then youth team coach Adrian Pennock, suffering from severe altitude sickness and hypothermia, down from the summit of Kilimanjaro during a charity climb for the Donna Louise in 2010.
The Doc, as Pulis called him, was not immune to the cold either – to the point where his eyebrows had frozen.