'Sir Bobby' Cox, Hero who lived dream in dark blue

Published on Sunday 21 February 2010 23:29

THERE are those who merely play for clubs, then there are those who represent them. Dundee FC were represented by Bobby Cox for over half a century. No football team could count themselves more fortunate.

Cox, who died in the early hours of Saturday at the age of 76, was a notable one-club man, even in the days when the species was not quite so endangered. Born a few hundred yards from the Dens Park ground where he made the majority of his 433 competitive appearances in a dark blue shirt, it was slightly ironic that the call from Dundee came after Cox, a supporter of the club, had moved to Yorkshire.

He was stationed in Ripon at the time, completing his National Service with the Signals Regiment. As Cox recounted in Jim Wilkie's book Bonetti's Blues , published in 2001, some English clubs had been watching him: "Sandy Evans, who was a soldier with me and a provisional signing for Dundee, contacted the club and suggested they go for me before someone in England did." This man Evans deserves a plaque inside Dens. There might be no Bobby Cox stand, possibly no solitary league title, without his intervention.

One club had already been given a chance to sign Cox – Dundee United. He was invited for a trial at Tannadice while playing for the junior side Dundee Osborne. But United told him he was too small, and to come back when he was bigger. When he did come back it was in the colours of a Dundee side who developed to become one of the finest the Scottish game has seen. Bob Crampsey, the late, respected football journalist, described the Dundee team which clinched the club's one-and-only championship win in 1962 as the "most classical" outfit he had witnessed.

Cox, the skipper, was the leader of the band, though in his own under-stated, often inscrutable way. "He was a really unflashy left-back, so dependable," Ian Ure, his former team-mate, told The Scotsman yesterday. "He was pretty quiet. But everyone looked to him. He was inspirational because he did his job in a very unshowy manner. He was such a tremendous slide-tackler. He had this great trait of taking the ball without taking the man.

"I shouldn't say this, but I think he was a better full-back than Alex Hamilton, on the right flank," added Ure. "Alex was totally attack-minded. Bobby was not so attack-minded. He was a traditional left-back, who kept his position by and large. It was a god mix I suppose – we had a rampant right-back and a solid left-back."

Cox's baffling absence of Scotland caps is perhaps one regrettable consequence of this ability to do his job with the minimum of fuss. Eric Caldow of Rangers was the man in possession of the left-back jersey. But even when he was injured – he broke his leg during a famous 2-1 win over England at Wembley in 1963 – Cox was overlooked. Instead, Celtic's Jim Kennedy was picked to step in.

This raised more than a few eyebrows. Cox, after all, had not only led Dundee to the league title just over a year earlier, he had also recently helped Bob Shankly's side cut a swathe through what were then considered the heartlands of European football. Dundee played the champions of Belgium and Portugal and progressed with emphatic aggregate wins. They also thrashed Cologne, among the most feared sides in the competition, 8-1. Remarkably, this was not an aggregate score, but instead was racked up in an epic first-leg contest at Dens.

The European Cup semi-final pitched Dundee against AC Milan, but Cox was injured for the first-leg in the San Siro. At 1-1 at half-time, the tie was evenly balanced. But four further goals for the Italians saw Dundee given an impossible task at Dens, though they did manage to win 1-0. Ure, Dundee's centre-half in Milan, recalls three of these goals coming down Dundee's left flank. It's tempting, if agonising, to wonder what might have been had Cox been fit. Ure is convinced the free-flowing Dundee would have claimed the European Cup on Wembley's lush, wide pitch, where the final was staged. Cox could have felt what Celtic's Billy McNeill did four years later; what it was like to be the first Briton to lift the greatest trophy in the club game.

But it all comes back to Dens Park, and the place where Cox was so at home. Angus Cook, the controversial Dundee chairman between 1987 and 1991, has many detractors, but must be praised for inviting Cox back to the club in an ambassadorial role after the facilities at Dens had been improved. "When I gave up the game I drifted away from Dens for a while and worked for British Railways," Cox once recalled. He retired from football in 1969, having signed for the club in 1955.

There was only one debate when Dundee built two new stands 11 years ago – who to name the away one after. Cox, known as 'Sir Bobby', was the only choice for the home end, at the Provost Road side of the ground. Prior to Saturday's 1-0 home win over Partick Thistle, and rather than adopting the traditional practice of standing around the centre-circle, the players from both sides lined up facing this stand. At the Cox family's request, they – and the fans, away ones included – enthusiastically clapped out what had been advertised as "a minute's tribute", but which was of course much longer than that.

Shortly into the match Dundee scored the winning goal which served as another fitting tribute to Cox. Not only was it claimed in front of his stand, but it arrived via the boot of Eric Paton, one of Cox's successors as skipper and also a full-back. Dundee closed out a win which manager Jocky Scott hoped would have the "wee man jumping about up there". But he also acknowledged the weight of this sad time in Dundee's history.

Hector Nicol's club song, which salutes those who brought the league title to Dens nearly 50 years ago, crackled with an extra significance both before the match and at half-time. Another of the heroes name-checked in the final verse has been lost. Cox has joined Andy Penman, Gordon Smith and Hamilton in the high stand. There were few without a tear in their eye at Dens Park on Saturday, as we celebrated the club's greatest servant. But then, for so many, Cox had lived our dream.