Steve Davis joined Saints as a 17 year-old trainee, another prospect from Jack Hixon’s north-east production line. He tasted his first league action in a three-month loan spell at Burnley, who clearly marked his card.

Before he was farmed out again, he had a year back at Southampton in which he started and finished his first-team career. In his Dell debut, as a sweeper against Norwich, Matt Le Tissier bagged a hat-trick. Le Tissier scored a further six goals in Davis’s remaining five remaining appearances for Saints, prompting Steve to joke that, if his own Saints career had been longer, Matt would have been even more prolific. But Chris Nicholl was perhaps always likely to favour uncompromising defenders in his own moulds – such as Kevin Moore and Neil Ruddock – to the more cultured Davis and Steve feels he “just wasn’t Nicholl’s type of centre-back”. The prospects were even bleaker under Ian Branfoot, so Steve was happy to move to Fourth Division Burnley.

Success under Jimmy Mullen was rapid and the Clarets were promoted twice in three years. After relegation, the following season, Steve was out of contract and a tribunal set the fee for his move to Kenilworth Road at £750,000 – more than ten times what Burnley had paid Southampton. In 138 League games for Luton, he scored 21 goals –a remarkable ratio for a defender who never took penalties – before he was brought back to Turf Moor as captain by Stan Ternent, Steve’s favourite manager, whose £800,000 investment was rewarded with promotion.

Having wound down his playing career with Blackpool and York, he returned to Burnley, where he soon became the first-team coach. Although Burnley was promoted to the Premier League in 2009, manager Owen Coyle switched horses, mid-season, to join his former club, Bolton Wanderers. Steve went with him, despite this being “a massive wrench” for an adopted Claret who remains proud of the part he played, as a player and coach, “in taking them through the divisions.”

Sacked by Bolton in October 2012, Coyle became Wigan’s manager in June 2013. Steve didn’t go with him this time but joined Fleetwood Town as a scout. Alastair Campbell, erstwhile spin-doctor to Tony Blair and long-time Clarets fan, includes Steve in his “all-time” Burnley XI (no spin). A rock-solid career of around 600 games in all competitions, with an astounding 76 goals from centre-back, rather suggests that he is “one that got away” from the Saints. In 2019 and living in Lancashire he joined Everton’s scouting team after six years at Fleetwood.