Peter Beagrie is full of admiration for team-mate Gordon Watson as nears he the end of his 18-month battle for fitness.

The City striker suffered a double fracture of his right leg in the West Yorkshire derby clash with Huddersfield Town in February 1997.

Watson was making only his third appearance for City since his £550,000 move from Southampton when he was tackled by Terriers defender Kevin Gray.

It has been a long, hard fight to save his career - something which Beagrie can empathise with following the injury which kept the winger out for nearly two years.

Beagrie said: "I can sympathise with him more than most because of the length of time I was out through injury."

Beagrie suffered horrendous injury problems at Maine Road and made just one substitute's appearance in the season before he joined the Bantams.

He made an encouraging start to last season with his trickery out wide proving invaluable although his form did appear to drop off in mid-season - perfectly understandable after such a long time out.

However after playing the majority of last season for both City and Everton, the winger appears to have found his best form this time around.

Watson has admitted that he will need about 20 games before he feels his full match fitness will have returned.

Beagrie's form in the opening weeks of the campaign bears this out and he believes Watson will make a big impact for City.

"Gordon is going to be an important player for us this year. He has still got Premiership quality and he sees things early and his movement is excellent.

"His recovery speaks volumes as to what they can do with surgery nowadays."

There were genuine fears about Watson's future in the game, but the former Sheffield Wednesday striker fought his way through various operations and rehabilitation processes to resume full-time training at the end of June.

Since then he has had minor injuries as the club have nursed him along the way to full fitness and now he is beginning to make his in the first team.

Watson has been out for so long that in some ways he can be regarded as a new signing and it is a sobering thought that had he stayed fit and consistent City might not have made quite so many costly excursions into the transfer market to sign strikers.

In the following close season Robert Steiner was signed for £500,000 and four months later John McGinlay arrived as the new club record £625,000 signing in an effort to solve their long standing goalscoring problems.

In recent weeks, Watson has made two impressive substitute appearances in ten days, first at Halifax in the Worthington Cup and then at West Brom in City's 2-0 win in the league.

In both games he came close to scoring with his overhead kicks which crashed against the crossbar, the one at the Hawthorns being particularly unfortunate.

After these two successful outings he started a match for the first time when Isaiah Rankin and Lee Mills were ruled out of the second round, second leg against Halifax Town in midweek.

He did not play for the full 90 minutes, but it was another important step on his road back to fitness.

Beagrie said: "I think the club have been very sensible in his rehabilitation and I believe it is only a matter of time before he is a permanent fixture in the first team."

Bantams still seeking treble

Lee Mills' double inside the first 15 minutes of last week's victory at West Brom brought about a real chance of the first hat-trick by a City player in nearly four years.

Four seasons is a long time for a club to go without someone claiming the matchball and the former Port Vale man went very close to grabbing the third goal when played through with just seven minutes remaining.

As Mills raced towards the goal, the last man to score a hat-trick in City colours was willing the striker on but it was not to be as he pulled his shot well wide.

Ironically it was City boss Paul Jewell who grabbed the last hat-trick for City in the club's 5-1 victory at Plymouth Argyle in August 1994.

It capped an amazing start to the season for Jewell who had grabbed an opening day hat-trick in a 4-1 win at Chester City.

Then, in the first home game of the season he grabbed both goals in a 2-0 win over Leyton Orient before the trip to Home Park on the third Saturday of the season.

That gave the current City boss eight goals in three league games to put City top of the table and he followed this with four more goals before the end of October.

Unfortunately for the City striker, the club's horrendous drop in form which culminated in them winning just two points in their final eight games meant Jewell finished top scorer with 14 goals. The Bantams eventually claimed 14th position with 60 points.

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