Charlie Cox

Published on Thursday 29 January 2009 21:02

Footballer

Born: 19 February, 1926, in Glasgow.

Died: 15 December, 2008, in Glasgow, aged 82.

CHARLIE Cox was a member of the first Motherwell side to win the Scottish Cup, beating Dundee 4-0 in the 1952 final. The crowd of 136,304 will forever remain the highest post-Second World War attendance at Hampden Park and the highest ever for a match not involving Celtic, Rangers or Scotland.

Cup success in April 1952 came to Cox a mere five months after he joined the Steelmen from Hearts in a 6,500 joint deal which took him and right-winger Tommy Sloan from Tynecastle to Fir Park. Along the road to Hampden the pair played their part in beating Hearts 3-1 in the semi-final, after a 1-1 draw, while Cox's close marking of the great Billy Steel was an important part of the team performance which took the cup to Motherwell.

Born in the Yoker area of Glasgow, Cox, whose uncle John Blair captained Scotland while with Cardiff City in the 1920s, first attracted attention as a schoolboy at Dumbarton Academy, where he captained a league-winning side. He later moved to Yoker Athletic in the juniors and it was from here that he joined Hearts on 1 May, 1944, one of several future stars signed by manager Dave McLean around this time.

On leaving school, Cox intended to go to university to study civil engineering, but the war intervened and when he joined Hearts he was, like teammate Alfie Conn, a "Bevin Boy". Cox had to wait for his debut, however, finally taking his bow at right-back in a Hearts side which beat Celtic 5-3 at Celtic Park on 29 December, 1945.

After this he quickly established himself at right-half, going on to make 155 first-team appearances, scoring seven goals. His last game was a 4-3 Tynecastle defeat of Queen of the South, on 10 November, 1951.

He then lost his place and Tommy Walker, building his own side after succeeding McLean, was happy to release him and Sloan to Motherwell.

The Motherwell defence of the time – skipper Willie Kilmarnock and John "Baldy" Shaw at full-back, Cox, Andy Paton and Willie Redpath at half-back – was the key element in the club's cup win and although troubled by injuries in his later years at Fir Park, Cox was an important player for the club until he retired.

There was another Hampden appearance in the Motherwell side which lost the League Cup final to Hearts on 23 October, 1954. He suffered relegation with the Steelmen in the season following their Scottish Cup win, but the club immediately bounced back to the top flight, before continuing a yo-yo existence by following their Hampden cup final appearance in October 1954 with relegation at the end of that season, in April 1955, only to be saved by league reorganisation.

Cox's final three seasons with the club were marred by injuries; he contracted phlebitis after a kick on the calf and underwent pioneering vein-stripping surgery in an unsuccessful effort to prolong his career, but, in 1958, just as the famed "Ancell Babes", legends began to develop – half-backs Charlie Aitken, John Martis and Bert McCann, and the wonderful Willie Hunter, Sammy Reid, Ian St John, Pat Quinn and Andy Weir forward line – he hung up his boots after almost 100 games for the club.

Cox played with several internationalists, including Conn, Willie Bauld and Jimmy Wardhaugh at Hearts, and Paton and Redpath at Motherwell, but he never played for Scotland. However, some reference books list him as having played once for his country, in a 0-3 Paris defeat by France during an end-of-season continental tour in 1948.

Morton's Billy Campbell was chosen to play, but he broke the toecap of one of his boots in the warm-up and, after unsuccessfully trying the boots of three of the Scotland reserves, Campbell withdrew; this allowed Sammy Cox of Rangers, a distant relative of Charlie, to make his international debut.

With few if any Scottish football writers accompanying that particular international party, Charlie Cox was somehow wrongly credited with being that last-minute replacement – a mistake Cox found embarrassing – but which was still being made as recently as 2006 in a book published that year.

When he hung up his boots he had known no other job but footballer; however his wife Betty, whom he had married in 1951, worked for a wine and spirits merchant and she pulled some strings to get her husband a job – one he kept and enjoyed until his retirement.

Along the way they had three children while Cox took great pleasure from the large garden in the Cathcart house into which they moved in 1953 and which was to be the family home for more than 40 years before, with the garden becoming too much for him, they moved into a retirement flat in Giffnock.

Like so many of his footballing contemporaries, Cox's last years were blighted by Alzheimer's and he had to move into a specialist care home, where he passed away.

Charlie Cox, who was predeceased by a son, Euan, two years ago, is survived by his wife, a son, a daughter, seven grandchildren and one great-grandson.

Taken from the Scotsman