While doing his National Service as a PT Instructor in the Army, Sam Stevens returned from Germany in April 1956, to be stationed for 10 days at Bordon. That was long enough for Ted Bates to bring him to The Dell, give him a run-out in the “A” team and then throw him into a first-team friendly v an Ex-Saints XI.

Playing against the likes of Alf Ramsey and Don Roper, Sam impressed. But he was “in two minds” about becoming a footballer, full-time. So he went home to Scotland, where he had been an amateur at Queens Park, to play part-time for First Division Airdrie, while studying accountancy at night-school – a choice made to please his parents, even though he was already thinking of a career in teaching or coaching.

The ever-persistent Bates rang Sam “a few times to see how I was getting on” and eventually persuaded him, in June 1957, to return south for what Sam calls a “gap year”, although he actually stayed for two. After a season as the Reserves’ principal left-half, he broke into the first team early in the following season, impressing the Echo on his debut and then enjoying a run in which Charlie Livesey was on song. But the end-of-season sale of Livesey brought Cliff Huxford to The Dell and Sam’s “gap” experience in the Football League was over. It was time to get some “A” levels and then train as a teacher at King Alfred’s College, Winchester, while playing part-time for Southern League Poole, who paid him more than he had earned, full-time, at Southampton.

He taught PE locally, in Millbrook and then Fair Oak. And having gained his full coaching badge, he occasionally helped Lew Chatterley, and later Dave Merrington, at Southampton, in what he refers to as “the early stages of the academy,” with Alan Shearer and Neil Maddison coming through. He became the Football Development Officer for the Sports Council’s southern region, focusing on the development of coach-education and not exclusively for football, sharing with aspiring coaches his mantra that “you cannot put in what God left out.” Still living in the area in retirement, Sam plays the occasional round of golf, sometimes meeting up with ex-Saint Ian White, who, “followed me around,” he reckons, to Portals and Swaythling, in turn.