It was a pairing that would make a strong contribution to the club winning the League in 1902, whilst for him personally it led to a cap against Wales in 1903, alongside McCombie, the same against England four weeks later, an away win, a third start, this time without McCombie, against England the following year and once more in 1905, with however, both games defeats.

However, in 1904 Sunderland, its then manager, Alex Mackie, and McCombie were involved in a row about payments to players. Mackie was banned by the English FA and replaced by Bob Kyle, McCombie moved on to Newcastle and, whilst Watson would form a new partnership with Dusty Rhodes, results would slip and after well over two hundred starts in just short of seven seasons he too would, in 1907, at thirty, move on. 

He went to Middlesbrough, another hundred plus appearances and where his form would pick up to such an extent that in 1909 he would be capped twice more, including the England match. Yet it was to prove something of a last hurrah. Middlesbrough only just avoided relegation in 1910, at which point he took over a pub in the Co. Durham village of Shildon, played for its team for a season then stayed another year before returning to Larkhall, from where in 1920 the decision was made to emigrate with his family to Canada. On moving to Sunderland he had married Jane Patrick, originally from Dalserf. They were to have four children, all Sunderland-born, with all six now following his brother to Coalvilleton by Nanaimo on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, he working once more as a miner. That is until a move by 1930 first to Vancouver, where he worked as a Janitor and then back to the island to Victoria. And it was there that in 1942 in hospital at the age of just sixty-five he died, to be buried locally at the Royal Oak Burial Park and survived by Jeanie by six years. Her death would be in 1948 back in Vancouver city.