Luke Watson told me that leaving Bath Rugby for a return to his native Eastern Province was the hardest decision he'd ever had to make. Here I give my take on the Bath skipper's impending departure.
On Sunday, the day before Luke Watson (pictured) announced he was to leave Bath Rugby and return to South Africa, he was on his knees.
"Making the biggest decisions in life requires a lot of prayer!" he said on his Twitter page before quoting Scripture, Luke's Gospel appropriately: "But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed."
Luke Watson is a Christian first, a rugby player second (or possibly third, what with his expanding family). This I learnt almost exactly a year ago when I conducted my first interview with him following his arrival at The Rec from Western Province.
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"My faith is the foundation of my life," he told me back then, that fierce, uncompromising look in his eyes. "I put everything behind that.
"When I had the opportunity of Bath coming up I realised that this is where God wanted me to be, that there was more than just rugby here – that God wanted to do a massive thing not only within the club but within the city."
But the very thing that Watson believes brought him to Bath last November – his faith – has now guided him back to South Africa. His home town of Port Elizabeth, to be precise.
No doubt many secular Bath fans will find this hard to understand – and hard to stomach, too – but then the ex-Springbok has never been an easy player to understand. Never predictable, never boring, and always – you feel – just a few seconds away from making a decision that will wrong-foot a lot of people.
But the timing of the announcement is curious. Watson is not a man who does life in half measures, so why decide to leave Bath with a definite sense of 'mission unaccomplished'?
He only arrived at The Rec 13 months ago and was made captain in August. Surely he hasn't given himself enough time to accomplish the "massive" things he was so excited about this time last year. He's only played 29 games for Bath, and is leaving for a second-tier side.
Following the arrival of new owner Bruce Craig in April, Bath will have hoped that in Watson they'd found the right skipper to take them into their bold, cash-rich new era. The expectation will have been that Watson would provide a firm spine around which a new squad would develop.
That he has opted not to renew his contract will therefore have caused disappointment among the management, but – all things considered – I can't say I'm surprised Watson will be on his way in June.
I had heard in November that Eastern Province were interested in luring him back home on a better wedge than most people would expect from a second division side.
Then there's his South African wife to think of. She is due to give birth in early spring – a not insignificant variable in the Watsons' should-we- stay-or-should-we-go equation.
Life without a cause and a vision is, for Watson, a life not worth living. The vision he will take to Eastern Province is to build a fledgling club – of which his father, Cheeky, happens to be president – into a major power in the southern hemisphere game.
His faith is inextricably linked to a sense of social justice. Many of South Africa's black players have grown up in Eastern Province and Watson views a return to his home town as an opportunity to take the 'transformation' of a previously white-dominated game to a wider rugby audience.
But before all that, Watson has a tonne of work to do at Bath – 19 regular-season games, injury permitting.
And if he can bring to those games the kind of ebullience and leadership he showed against Leicester Tigers earlier this season at Welford Road, then that would be something every Bath Rugby fan could say 'Amen' to.
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