One man’s football odyssey to bring up Pohnpei

Archimedes had his famous eureka moment while sitting in the bath. Paul Watson — like many of us — had his while sitting on his couch.

The Englishman was kicking back with his flatmate, watching his national team lose to Croatia in the rain. And with it, a summer watching the Three Lions at Euro 2008 in Austria and Switzerland was dissolving in the rain along with the job prospects of the Wally with the Brolly, Steve McClaren.

Then — echoing the words of a panicky producer in his earpiece, no doubt — the TV commentator uttered the sentence that set in train a series of events that would see Watson become a national team manager, thousands of miles from home within 12 months.