Kevin Dawtry was a member of the Jantree FC when they won the Tyro League U13 cup in 1972 and as the team contained the sons of four ex-Saints players (Bobby McLaughlin’s son, Sam, Ron Davies’s, Russell, Tommy Traynor’s two boys, Chris and Nicky and Bob Charles step-son, Alan Turner), it was, perhaps, a surprise that he was to be the only lad to progress to apprentice level. His subsequent development at St Mary’s College and with Southampton Schools was monitored by the Saints’ veteran scout, Tom Parker. Having served two seasons as an apprentice, he signed pro in the summer of 1976. A frustrating three seasons followed, in which he played 100 or so Combination games without achieving a first-team breakthrough, apart from an appearance at the Ibrox Festival in August 1977. He finally got a taste of League action in an end-of-season fixture at high-riding Nottingham Forest in May 1979, coming off the bench for the injured Oshor Williams. With “neither side in the mood,” according to Lawrie McMenemy’s diary,

a debutant was never likely to rise above this “nondescript affair”.

Kevin returned to the Reserves, seldom missing a game, in 1979-80.

A skillful dribbler, who was willing to take on opponents, he was essentially a wide midfielder – one who scored his share of the goals from that position.

All of which earned him a free transfer to First Division Crystal Palace. Without getting a first-team game, he left in time to play in Bournemouth’s Division IV run-in. Although he missed the following season’s closing stages, he had by then contributed some points-winning goals, helping the Cherries to promotion. Bournemouth celebrated with an Australasian tour. Kevin got among the goals on the New Zealand leg, but the highlight of the trip was perhaps in Perth when Alan Ball guested for the tourists against a Western Australia XI that included Ted MacDougall and John Sydenham.

He played on at Bournemouth, save for a handful of games on loan at Third Division Reading, until he embarked on a nomadic non-league journey in 1984, playing for a while and then moving into coaching and management which he was able to combine working as a production planner and raw-material purchaser for a chemicals company at the Fawley Oil Refinery complex. He managed Wessex League Totton & Eling for five years until he stepped down in February 2013.

He told the Echo that he was “all footballed out” and responded to speculation that he might pop up at another club by declaring that he was “going nowhere – except horse-racing.”