Sunderland's Duncan Watmore earns first class degree
Thursday 10 December 2015 13:28, UK
Sunderland forward Duncan Watmore has become just the second Premier League footballer to graduate with first-class honours.
Black Cats boss Sam Allardyce allowed the England U21 star a day off training to collect his first in economics and business management.
The Premier League's only other footballer to gain a first-class degree was former Leeds and Bradford defender David Wetherall, who graduated from Sheffield University in chemistry in 1992.
Watmore's parents Ian, a former chief executive of the Football Association and an ex-senior civil servant in the Cabinet Office, and Georgina, a rector in Cheshire, proudly watched the graduation ceremony at Newcastle University.
He started his degree at Manchester University when he was playing non-league football with Altrincham, but switched to the north-east and Newcastle University after impressing Sunderland scouts.
After the the graduation ceremony, he said: "It's a really nice feeling. It has been a lot of hard work in the past three years. It is good to get it done.
"You have to sacrifice a lot with football but that was something I was more than willing to do because football was my ultimate aim and the degree was something I just wanted to do in the evening to catch up at night.
"It was not the typical student life. I missed out on a few things but I really enjoyed it.
"It was hard. There were a lot of long nights in my flat just catching up, reading textbooks, going online for lectures, emailing lecturers.
"It was hard at times but the club at Sunderland were awesome with me, and so were Newcastle University.
"They were both always willing to compromise to help me to get through, they were massive in what I achieved and so I'm very grateful for that."
