Thank You: Sam Ellis

I was a child of the eighties, brought up on a diet of bang average football but laced with stories of wonderful players from the past. Whenever I mentioned a defender I liked, Sean Dunphy for example, my Dad would always say something like ‘he’s not a patch on Big Sam’.

My experience of Sam Ellis wasn’t so great, he came back in the nineties as a manager and a failed one at that. still, it can’t be allowed to sully his wonderful playing career with us.

He cost Graham Taylor £7000 from Mansfield in 1973 and went on to give us four stellar years of service. He played 173 times for City, bagging 33 goals before going to Watford with the manager in 1977. He was named Player of the Year in the wonderful 1975/76 season and again the following year.

It’s fair to say thank you for ‘Super Sam’ as he became known.