Mike Davis, who has died aged 80, will always be associated with one of English rugby union’s most celebrated triumphs. In his first Five Nations campaign as England’s head coach, the schoolteacher from Sherborne helped steer the national team to the 1980 grand slam under the captaincy of Bill Beaumont, the first red rose clean sweep since the late 1950s.
It was a spectacular contrast to the years of underachievement that had preceded Davis’s arrival, with Wales and France having dominated for much of the 70s. England had some fine individual players such as Beaumont, Fran Cotton, Peter Wheeler, Tony Neary, Clive Woodward and Mike Slemen, but selection had been notoriously inconsistent and the team had seldom gelled.
