The Great Sammy Cox

[Scott7 5,178]

Another pearl cast by the learned dh1963 on FollowFollow

 

”The small Ayshire town of Darvel has supplied some truly great Rangers players. Immortals from the late 19th and early 20th century John McPherson, Nicol Smith and Alec Smith all hailed from the town. And another famous son of Darvel who was destined for Rangers greatness was born there in April 1924, and he was given the name Samuel Richmond Cox.

Born to John and Margaret Cox – he was given the middle name of Richmond after her maiden name – Sammy Cox was an outstanding schoolboy footballer who was good enough to be selected by Ayrshire junior side Glenafton at the tender age of 13. He was signed by Darvel Juniors in 1940, and then played for senior sides Queen’s Park, Third Lanark and Dundee while serving with the Gordon Highlanders. He served in the Gordons doubling as a physical training instructor under a Colonel McGregor. He was so proud of those associations that he would later called his third son Gordon McGregor Cox.

Cox was signed for Rangers by legendary manager Bill Struth in May 1946, immediately playing his first match for the club in the 4-0 defeat of Airdrieonians in the Victory Cup on 4 May. Rangers progressed to the final, beating Celtic in the semi-final, and won the “one-off” tournament on 15 June, beating Hibs 3-1 to gain Cox, playing at right back, his first honour.

Though naturally left-sided, his versatility showed the following season when he made 13 appearances for Rangers, playing in four different positions, before tying down a place in the first XI the following season when he played in every league match and gained a Scottish Cup winner’s medal in the replay victory over Morton.

His form was recognised by the Scotland selectors and he made the first of his 25 appearances in the dark blue shirt in the 3-0 defeat by France on 23 May, 1948. An imperious left-back on the international stage, which he graced 25 times between 1948 and 1954, Cox was deployed more frequently as a left-half by his Ibrox club.

In season 1948-49, the almost permanent switch to left-half was the making of Cox, and the Iron Curtain also came into being, with Rangers winning the first domestic treble in Scottish football history – the League Cup had only come into being in season 46-47. Cox was a vital member of the treble-winning team, his hard tackling and reading of the game proving major assets. Though no giant – he was just 5ft 8ins tall and weighed less than 11 stone – Cox had a brilliant grasp of positional play that marked him as a player ahead of his time.

In that season 48-49, the League title was won by a point from Dundee, the League Cup was won against Raith Rovers and the Scottish Cup won against Clyde. He also starred for Scotland in the 3-1 defeat of England at Wembley on 9 April, 1949.
The revered English winger Stanley Matthews once described Sammy Cox as the most difficult full-back he had ever faced. There could hardly have been more eloquent testimony to the prowess of the Rangers and Scotland stalwart, whose cocktail of subtle skills, acute tactical intelligence and deceptive power for a man of slight build was equalled by few defenders during the middle years of the 20th century.

Cox was again ever-present when Rangers retained the League title the following season, but there followed a couple of barren seasons with Hibs and their Famous Five in the ascendancy. Cox continued to be selected for Scotland, however, and gained his last cap against England in 1954 when he was made captain of the side. He had also been selected 13 times for the Scottish League XI in its various international fixtures.

By then, he fell out of favour with new manager Scot Symon and though he had won the last of his three league winner’s medals in season 52-53, and played 44 games out of 47 in 53-54, by the following season he was no longer a permanent fixture in the side and in February 1955, he played the last of his 316 games for Rangers in a Scottish Cup loss at Pittodrie. In his Rangers career, he scored 20 goals and was never booked or sent off.

Cox then played a couple of seasons for East Fife, but like so many Scots of the time, he needed to travel west to find work – footballers in those days were paid little more than the average skilled worker, so Cox and his family emigrated to Canada where, having retired from full-time football, he went to work for Fischer Bearings Manufacturing in Stratford, Ontario, where he and his family made their home.
He would work for the company for 35 years until his retirement.

In the late 1950s he continued to play regularly in the National Soccer League for Toronto Ulster United in 1958, Toronto Sparta in 1959 and was player-coach of Stratford Fischers in 1960. He was also selected for the Ontario All-Stars against West Bromwich Albion in Toronto in May 1959, when the English tourists included no less a personage than Sir Bobby Robson in a side that beat their hosts 6-1.

Cox continued to follow Rangers and was a much-loved member of the North American Rangers Supporters Association, which has created a special banner in his honour. He was also inducted into Rangers Hall of Fame in 2003, an honour he greeted with the heartfelt declaration: “Once a Bluenose, always a Bluenose!”

In his later years Cox was cared for by his wife and the staff of the Spruce Lodge nursing home in Stratford, where he passed away in August 2015 at the age of 91.”

 

[compo 6,147]

My father said he was a great reader of a game .

[Scott7 5,178]

Many years ago on the old Rivals board there was a discussion about the Iron Curtain playing in the context of modern football. An old geezer who’d watched them reckoned Shaw and Young would have struggled against pace, McColl and Woodburn would have been fine and Sammy Cox would have strolled it.