Watford’s Adrian Mariappa: 'There’s Been Moments That Have Been Really Tough in My Career'

 Adrian Mariappa was told by Watford aged 15 that he had no future there but has gone on to make 309 appearances for the club. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian
Adrian Mariappa was told by Watford aged 15 that he had no future there but has gone on to make 309 appearances for the club. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian
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Watford’s Adrian Mariappa: 'There’s Been Moments That Have Been Really Tough in My Career'

 Adrian Mariappa was told by Watford aged 15 that he had no future there but has gone on to make 309 appearances for the club. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian
Adrian Mariappa was told by Watford aged 15 that he had no future there but has gone on to make 309 appearances for the club. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

It is three years since Watford last played Crystal Palace in the FA Cup, Palace prevailing at Wembley in the 2016 semi-finals. It is a match that carries particularly strong memories for Adrian Mariappa; as a graduate of Watford’s youth system he was looking forward to facing his former club on the nation’s greatest stage, but what could have been one of the highlights of his career became one of its greatest disappointments.

“I travelled but I didn’t make the bench, and I was devastated,” he recalls. “Devastated. We played a league game during the week and I started that game. I came to Wembley, playing Watford, my hometown club, and when I found out I wasn’t involved at all, not even on the bench, it was gut-wrenching. I tried to keep a positive outlook for the guys who were playing, and it was a great day for the club, but it wasn’t a nice feeling.”

Four months later he rejoined Watford after a four-year absence, apparently as low-cost squad padding, a free-transfer homegrown player to make up the numbers. During the first 30 league games of that campaign, three while still at Palace and the remainder in Hertfordshire, he did not spend a single minute on the pitch. The following April, amid a horrendous injury crisis, Walter Mazzarri was forced to give him a go, and Mariappa kept his place for the remainder of the season.

Mazzarri’s successor, Marco Silva, and the current manager, Javi Gracia, both doubted the defender, casting him to the sidelines before being won over. He has played 56 of 77 league games since April 2017, and is now 21st on the list of the club’s all-time appearance-makers with 309.

“There’s been moments that have been really tough in my career, when I’m not playing,” he says. “For a long time at Palace I was travelling to matches and I wasn’t making the bench, and I hardly played any league games. It does become tough mentally. But I don’t think I ever doubted myself or my ability. I just knew I had to get through this time and stick to the principles that have got me to this place. You skip forward to now, it’s justification to myself, I was doing the right things.

“Football’s an opinion-based sport and you can go from one manager who believes in you, believes in your ability and plays you every week, to another manager who might not think you’re for them, and through all that you need to have complete belief in yourself and try to do all the small one percents to improve. That’s what I believe. I’ll work on the little one percents to improve myself and make myself a better player, and the rest of it essentially isn’t in your hands.”

It is a lesson Mariappa had to learn early. Having joined Watford as an eight-year-old he worked his way through the system until at 15 they decided not to offer him a scholarship, and for a while the dream seemed if not dead, then at least very distant.

“I was playing up with the under-17s when I got my decision that I wasn’t going to get a full scholarship. And the next day I was back playing in the under-15s. At the time that felt like my world had shattered. But the next day I made the decision that I would do everything I could, everything that was in my control to try to make it in football.

“I didn’t use it as an excuse, I used it as something to spur me on. They’re principles that have stuck with me, throughout my whole career. When I came here I was probably the sixth-choice centre-half, and I had to wait for a lot of injuries to get an opportunity. I’ve always tried to stick by what I know is the right thing to do – train hard, keep myself mentally at it, so when I get an opportunity I can take it.”

As a teenager Mariappa enrolled with an athletics club, missing summer holidays to work on improving his speed. “My sprint technique was terrible – quite flat-footed, I needed to learn to run on my toes,” he says. He was also shorter than most centre-backs, so he joined a basketball club to improve his jumping. “I moved to centre-half at a very young age and probably from the age of 14 onwards I was told, every single year, I was going to have to try to adapt my game to play right-back or midfield.

“But I knew my best position was centre-half and I used to work relentlessly on my jumping and my timing. My dad used to do loads of work in the garden with me. I always enjoy the challenge of playing against someone who’s bigger than me, and trying to prove that it doesn’t matter about my height [5ft 11in]. If I hadn’t worked on that, and I didn’t get my timing and my jumping right, I don’t even know what would have happened to be honest.”

Now 32, he continues to work on those one percents. More recently, hoping for another small improvement, he adopted a vegan diet. “I did a bit of research and thought: ‘Let’s give it a go.’ I’ve never been one to follow a fad diet. A lot of people have said I’m just following a trend, but a year and a half later I’m still doing it. I wouldn’t say I’ll never go back to eating meat, but I can’t see myself going back to eating meat. It’s served me really well so far. I feel like I can recover quicker and obviously the older you get, the more important being able to recover is.”

He is in some ways an embodiment of the club he represents, not only because it is nearly a quarter of a century since he first joined – “I’ll never be able to get away from Watford. Whatever I’m doing I’ll always be part of this club” – but because Watford, like Mariappa, are smaller than many of their rivals, often unfancied, forced to work tirelessly on the one percents to remain competitive.

There are 31 English clubs, including every Premier League team except Bournemouth, who exceed Watford’s average attendance of 20,211 this season, yet Gracia’s side are eighth in the table and will reach another FA Cup semi-final should they beat Palace.

“I don’t think we’ve finished yet,” Mariappa says. “I don’t think the owners here will settle for complacency. They won’t let the players do it and the manager definitely won’t. A lot of people thought at this point in the season we would just down tools but we haven’t. Who knows where the club can go? One step at a time. We just want to finish the season well, and make another big step forward.”

The Guardian Sport



Piastri Confident McLaren Will Stay Strong All Year

Formula One F1 - Bahrain Grand Prix - Bahrain International Circuit, Sakhir, Bahrain - April 10, 2025 McLaren's Oscar Piastri ahead of the race REUTERS/Rula Rouhana
Formula One F1 - Bahrain Grand Prix - Bahrain International Circuit, Sakhir, Bahrain - April 10, 2025 McLaren's Oscar Piastri ahead of the race REUTERS/Rula Rouhana
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Piastri Confident McLaren Will Stay Strong All Year

Formula One F1 - Bahrain Grand Prix - Bahrain International Circuit, Sakhir, Bahrain - April 10, 2025 McLaren's Oscar Piastri ahead of the race REUTERS/Rula Rouhana
Formula One F1 - Bahrain Grand Prix - Bahrain International Circuit, Sakhir, Bahrain - April 10, 2025 McLaren's Oscar Piastri ahead of the race REUTERS/Rula Rouhana

Oscar Piastri has dismissed talk of McLaren being slowed by a rule change in June and says he expects the champions to stay strong all season.
The FIA, Formula One's governing body, will introduce more stringent front wing load tests from the Spanish Grand Prix on June 1 to reduce the permitted level of flex after already addressing rear wings, Reuters reported.
Red Bull team boss Christian Horner said in Japan last weekend that the change would be significant and there was "an unknown" as to who would be affected.
"We have a big regulation change coming at race nine. You know, how is that going to affect the run of play?" the Briton told Sky Sports television.
Piastri doubted it would make much difference to McLaren, who lead both championships with Lando Norris a point clear of Red Bull's four-times world champion Max Verstappen, the winner at Suzuka last Sunday.
"I'm pretty confident we’ll be strong all year," the Australian told reporters ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix, round four of the championship.
"I don’t think it’ll change too much. I’ve not spoken to the team about it massively, in all honesty, which probably tells you enough about that.
"Let’s see when we get to Spain, but we’ve still got a lot of races until then and I think we’ll be a strong team all year round."
Piastri, winner in China after Norris won the Australian opener, said he would rather be driving his car than a Red Bull.
While Verstappen has shown it can be a winner, he is already on his second teammate of the season after Liam Lawson was demoted back to Racing Bulls with Yuki Tsunoda going in the opposite direction.
"Clearly the car looks pretty difficult. We’ve seen that with Liam. We saw it with Checo (Sergio Perez) last year, even with Yuki in Japan," said Piastri.
"I think going into an environment that has been so focused on the way Max drives for nearly 10 years now -- it would be a very tough environment to go into and have immediate success.
"I’m quite happy that I’m driving a McLaren and not a Red Bull at the moment."
Piastri said the McLaren was a tricky car to extract maximum performance from but a lot of the ideas and philosophies were similar to last year.
"If I had to pick out of all 10 cars on the grid right now, I'd still pretty happily be choosing ours," he said.