After arriving in the summer of 1964, left-­back Richard Davis spent a solitary season at The Dell, making his only appearance against his home-town Plymouth.

It was not an auspicious debut as the team went down to a heavy 4-0 defeat and the Echo perhaps looking for convenient scapegoats described his performance – which included giving away a penalty – as “a nightmare”. He moved within the Second Division to Bristol City, where he was kept waiting for two years for his first-team debut. He eventually left, after making only half-a-dozen appearances, for Third Division Barrow. They were on their way to relegation and would soon be voted out of the Football League, but the issue for Richard was not in their demise – quite simply, his wife could not settle in Cumberland. So, after 50 games for Barrow, he returned to the West Country, for a brief non-league dalliance but, more importantly, to train as a teacher.

He then taught PE at South Trelawny for 11 years and Manadon for 15, before retiring to the Hartley Vale area of Plymouth in 2003.