Mike Williams
1940-2024

Mike will be remembered by most Old Sennockians for his passion in developing the individual through team sports, particularly rugby. This passion, allied to his genuine warmth, sympathy, humour and an often-extravagant charisma, made him a memorable colleague, leader and friend. Outside the school he was Head Coach of Sevenoaks Rugby Club, former player and 1st XV Vice -Captain of Blackheath RFC.

Robert Michael Williams was born in 1940 and grew up in Blaydon, County Durham. He was educated at Oundle School and later Bristol University where he was a member of the UAU (Universities Athletic Union) winning side in 1962. It is no exaggeration to say that his arrival on the teaching staff of Sevenoaks School in 1970 and his appointment as Master in Charge of Rugby revolutionised the attitude to team sport in the school, inspiring vigour and enthusiasm in team coaches and pupils alike. He changed the tone: no longer ‘play up and play the game’ but ‘play up and win the game’.

Just three years ago, Brendan Gallagher of the Daily Telegraph wrote a series of articles entitled ‘Great Rugby Schools’. All the expected schools were listed: Rossall, Haileybury, Wellington,  Millfield…and Sevenoaks. The big difference between Sevenoaks and the other schools was that our greatness was achieved over a much shorter period, specifically 1972-96: Mike’s coaching era. Described as a ‘human dynamo’ by Gallagher, Mike demonstrated truly outstanding coaching skills. His knowledge of the game and his passion to develop rugby at Sevenoaks bordered on the obsessive, and his techniques certainly had the desired effect. Stuart Thresher (OS 1981), who went on to play rugby professionally, was one of the first beneficiaries of the extraordinary coaching programme Mike introduced, which included pre-season tours to the Brecon Beacons and daily training sessions to strengthen every aspect of the players both physically and mentally. The  method was subsequently described in one of Mike’s publications, Water into Wine.

By the time Stuart approached the Sixth Form, Mike had already completed two major international tours with the school, during the first of which the Whitney Buccaneers RFC was born, and he was in the throes of arranging something altogether more ambitious: a circumnavigation of the globe. As a measure of Mike’s ambition, in 1980 the England national side had played nine games of rugby in New Zealand, and Sevenoaks School was a close second with seven games played there! A highlight of the tour was the game he arranged against Fiji in their national stadium in Suva, on the shores of the South Pacific with a 26,000-strong crowd, as a curtain-raiser to the Fiji vs All Blacks test match. Can there ever have been a greater game of school rugby?

The recent 50th anniversary reunion of that first side to be coached by Mike took on an added poignancy with the knowledge that he had died peacefully the day before. Mike had given them, and generations of schoolboy rugby players, a love of rugby, values which have stayed with them for life and the strongest group of friends anyone could ask for. In memory of that great day in Fiji, vinaka vakalevu, Mike!

Mike is survived by his beloved wife Rose and stepdaughter Klare.