| Full name | Herbert James Michael Sayers | ||||||||||||||||
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| Date of birth | 1 May 1911 | ||||||||||||||||
| Place of birth | Madras, India | ||||||||||||||||
| Date of death | 6 December 1943 (aged 32) | ||||||||||||||||
| Place of death | Ampthill, England | ||||||||||||||||
| School | Stonyhurst College | ||||||||||||||||
| Rugby union career | |||||||||||||||||
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Herbert James Michael Sayers (1 May 1911 — 6 December 1943) was an Irish international rugby union player. [1]
Born in Madras, Sayers was the only child of India-based civil servant Sir Frederick Sayers. He picked up rugby union as a schoolboy at Stonyhurst College in England and went on to attend Sandhurst. [2]
Sayers married the daughter of Woolworth chairman W. L. Stephenson, owner of the yacht Velsheda. [3]
A loose forward, Sayers played for Aldershot Services, the Army, Lansdowne, Richmond and Rosslyn Park. He represented Ireland during the late 1930s, debuting in their championship-winning 1935 Home Nations campaign as a wing-forward, a position he played exclusively aside from one match as a stand in wing three-quarter. [4]
Sayers was an army major, attached to the Canadian Artillery regiment during World War II, and died on active service as the passenger in a plane that crashed in Buckinghamshire on 6 December 1943, at the age of 32. [5]