As the final whistle sounded Lukasz Fabianski took a few strides to his right - with Watford fans celebrating around him - dropped to his haunches and knelt with his back against the goalpost, head down, disconsolate.

Alfie Mawson stared to the sky, probably desperately wishing he could have the moment again where he would get rid of the ball rather than gifting it to Etienne Capoue for Watford’s winner.

Elsewhere heads were down, a couple of players had dropped to their knees and had to be picked up by their opponents.

It made for grim viewing, and those feelings would have surely been felt every bit as deeply, if not more so, by the travelling contingent at Vicarage Road.

Six away defeats in a row, 16 away games without a clean sheet, two points from safety, five games left. At the moment the situation is every bit as bleak as those statistics suggest.

Gylfi Sigurdsson sits on the turf and reflects on the defeat to Watford

The players will return to training this week, they will build for the home game against Stoke.

We will also hear words about belief, words about hope and words about confidence. They don’t matter.

All that matters between now and the end of the season are results. Those words will only carry meaning if they are embodied by those who pull on a white shirt and cross the white line to try to keep Swansea City in the Premier League.

The impression one gets at the moment is that for all those words, and you can only assume those saying them sincerely hold that view, belief, confidence and hope are not currently evident in Swansea’s play.

They were in the early days of Clement’s reign, a period which saw Swansea’s best spell of form by some distance. There were five wins from eight, it already feels a very long time ago.

Yet, as strange as it would seem to say it, these players can still end this season as heroes.

Just as the side who escaped the drop against Hull in 2003 will always have their place in Swansea folklore and the eternal gratitude of the club and its supporters, so this side can allow the clearly required rebuilding process to take place in the top flight and not the Championship.

Do that, and for all the struggles and wretched performances we have seen, there would still be a gratitude for having done what is needed to keep Swansea in the top flight.

Jay Fulton tackles Tom Cleverley

The brutal reality is that there are a number of players among this squad who will not be here next season. But they are in control of the club’s destiny and the coming weeks will come to define how they are remembered by the Jack Army.

You would hope that matters to them, because it should.

Swansea are on their third full-time manager of the season. They all had or have their strengths and weaknesses, as any boss does, but the constant has been the players.

They are the ones whose actions matter most, they are the only ones who can make tackles, score goals, commit errors. It’s on them and they have to make their words count.

In recent weeks there has been a vibe of a team who are waiting for something to happen, rather than looking to make something happen.

It was on display again at Vicarage Road. Slow, laborious build-up play, uncertainty, a refusal to take the risk to play the throughball that was on.

The lack of conviction as cross after cross was under-hit or over-hit, a centre-forward who the stats show sprinted less than 20 metres during 81 minutes on the pitch. There will be people reading this who accomplished more than that running for the bus to work this morning.

That would not be good enough if Swansea were sitting in mid-table, it certainly isn’t now.

Premier League football has given a lot to Swansea as a club and an area. The local economy has been boosted, hotels, restaurants and bars have benefited from the larger numbers of travelling fans and the increased exposure the city has gained from having a team in the biggest domestic league in the world.

Swansea City head coach Paul Clement has a battle on his hands

All these things and more are at stake in the coming weeks.

There are, of course, wider issues that have put Swansea where they are and they go back to beyond the time Garry Monk was in charge. The issues of poor recruitment, the regular sales of the best players and other off-field factors all have contributed to this situation.

Indeed, the start of the on-field decline came the last time Swansea had been at Vicarage Road, in September 2015. They lost 1-0 that day, starting the run that led Monk to lose his job and which has only rarely relented since. One can only hope this latest 1-0 defeat in Hertfordshire can prove the bookend to the process started 19 months previously and that better is to come.

But the only men who can get Swansea out of this mess are the players. The majority of them are not Premier League rookies, they have performed at this level or higher before.

They need to stand up - not just individually but as a collective, as a team - and not just say they believe, but actually show it in their performances and get the job done.

They cannot wait for it to happen. They have to make it happen and it has to happen and it has to happen now, starting against Stoke.

For all the criticism they have received this season and the frustration felt at their struggles, they have to know they still have a supporter base, a city and a community desperately wanting them to succeed, wanting to acclaim them for saving Premier League status.

As unlikely as it seems, they can still end this most bitterly disappointing of seasons as heroes.