THE PITILESS LESSON of Covid-19: our plans are a lot more precarious than we thought.
Simon Cox was supposed to have spent the last few months playing football beneath the Sydney sunshine, but instead found himself back in London, filling days with 12-hour TV marathons of Gordon Ramsey. (Cox knows his way around the kitchen, much to the delight of his flatmate in Sydney.)
Cox left Southend United in January for the Western Sydney Wanderers, but lockdown brought an abrupt halt to the A-League season seven games into his stint. Thus he returned to be with his fiancée in London, where he kept himself in shape and his alarm in working order.
“There was one group Zoom session where we had to get together at like 4am”, Cox laughs. “One of the other lads here has a wife from Scotland so he was in the same boat as I was. Everyone here was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and there was me and him waking up with matchsticks in our eyes.”
Footballers know life’s precarity better than most. Cox says he would have been “pretty content” with an initial ambition to extend his contract with Southend by two or three years and then move into a coaching role, but that notion was kiboshed after a conversation with his new manager.
“Sol Campbell came in and said, ‘I’m going to go a completely different way’.
“‘It’s going to be a young team, so it’s probably best in January if you can look for a new team’. I was like, ‘Ok, fair enough.’
“I made the decision [to move to Sydney] with my agent and family. There’s a lot to be said about going somewhere and waking up when the sun shines. Not many people get to play abroad, and while it’s probably not something I’d thought about or dreamed of, but when I got the opportunity and saw the facilities, I thought, ‘Why not?’”
The situation at Southend was exacerbated by another of football’s greyer realities.
“I need a double hernia operation. I have been nursing that for the last three years and never really got a chance to get the surgery done over the summertime.
“The first year I really knew it [was a problem] was during my first year at Southend. I honestly thought it was purely down to the change in pitches I was used to at Reading.
“Then I got to the summer and it settled down a lot. I went into the next pre-season fully fit and ready to go, and didn’t feel it until I got to January time. Then I went on my A-Licence [coaching] course up in Scotland and had no time to do the surgery.
“I came back and tried to get through as much as I could with painkilling injections, and got to a point where I was doing that for so long it became the norm to me. It was more about getting rest in the summer than it was potentially doing rehab.”
He will finally go under the knife at the end of this season.
He is back in Sydney now, and is chatting to us over Zoom, in front of the blue skies and blazing sunshine of what Australians allegedly call winter.
Cox spoke openly with David Sneyd last year of the turmoil of a break-up with his long-term fiancée Samantha, but they have since got back together. An unscheduled trip home because of a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic notwithstanding, the couple now have to navigate long-distance and unfriendly time difference.
“We had an open and honest conversation as to what we wanted as a couple, and it’s been going very well since. The move to Sydney threw a few spanners into the works, but we’ve been together for nearly 15 years, so it’s a long time and we understand what we each bring to the relationship.
“We talk a couple of times a day, but it’s not been too bad. It’s a little like living on your own again, and you don’t really know what’s going to happen. She’s stuck in the house with the dogs, so she got the raw end of the deal! I got to live in a country where the sun shines, whereas she’s got to deal with everything else.”
“Obviously, long-distance is something that has to be worked on and it’s not something you take lightly, but ultimately we know what we’re doing and hopefully we can continue on the path.”
The A-League’s thrashing out a restart was fraught and uncertain but it returned this weekend, albeit a month after the AFL and rugby got their respective shows back on the road.
There are only five regular-season games to go – followed by the play-offs – but the league had to strike a revised TV deal to agree a restart and the problems have not yet abated.
A spike in Covid-19 cases has led to a stricter lockdown in Melbourne, and consequently the border between the provinces of Victoria and New South Wales has been closed.
The three Melbourne sides have been given permission to play out their games by basing themselves in New South Wales, although their mandatory two-week quarantine has meant their fixtures have been put back.
The sides needed three attempts to flee Melbourne, as twice they turned up to the airport and were sent back. Fog grounded planes during the first attempt, while the second foundered when teams were told they woud not be allowed to train when in quarantine. That issue has since been resolved.
And to add all of this the fact that a trio of European-based coaches have declined to return, Brisbane Roar manager Robbie Fowler among them.
Cox, however, is back.
“Honestly, from the day we stopped – 22 March – I didn’t kick a ball until I came back. I was always looking forward to coming back: I miss being able to kick a ball about. I’ve enjoyed it, although the mini pre-season we’ve been doing…I’ve not enjoyed that as much.”
Western Sydney Wanderers lie eighth in the table, a single point from the play-offs.
Cox is gazing slightly further into the future, and is plotting a move into coaching, ideally as a specialised strikers’ coach.
As for the past, Cox says he tries not to collect regrets, but hints that there are one or two stowed away as he talks about his international career in the past tense.
“I think that one is finished, now. It is pretty sad really, as I didn’t expect it to finish when it did. 2014 was my last game and I never really got a chance to play regularly. I was always either a sub or I’d play if someone got injured.”
Cox made 30 appearances for Ireland – three of them at Euro 2012 – but hasn’t been capped since a 5-1 friendly hammering to Portugal in 2014.
“There was more that I wanted to do. I wanted to play as long as possible, obviously. With Martin and Roy taking over I felt there was a chance to get more game time but it wasn’t to be.
“I enjoy talking to anyone who’ll listen about my Irish career, I thoroughly enjoyed it and gave me opportunities I never really thought I’d have.
“I would love to have played 50 or 100 times with Ireland and gone to more major tournaments, score loads more goals and leave a legacy. I was just unfortunate that the person I had to try and take out of the team was Ireland’s record goalscorer and Ireland’s record caps holder!
“But playing with someone like that is one of my fondest memories. I loved all of it. I don’t try to live with regrets, but if I had one, it would be that I didn’t really make as much of my Irish career as I should have done.”
The end was gradual and unsatisfactory, as he was found himself excluded from squad after squad.
“I went off on holiday [after what proved to be his final cap], and next season, the first squad was announced and I wasn’t in it.
“One thing I always struggled with is why national team managers fire out a provisional squad of 40 players. That sort of gives people hope without telling them whether they are in the manager’s plans or not.
“It would mean more to people, I think, that if the national team manager doesn’t have you in his plans for this game, then [make] a phone call.
A call from someone to say, ‘Look we like you not for this one but maybe for the next one, keep doing your stuff and we’re still watching.’ If you name a squad of 40 people and take it down to 23, it gives too many people a lot of false hope. I got faded out. And listen, better players than me have had the same treatment so I can’t be too unhappy, but it would have meant a lot to me to get a call to say, ‘We’ve enjoyed having you in the squad, but ultimately we are going to go down a different route, or this person is ahead of you’
“I would have respected that a lot more and accepted a lot more, but after 2014 I never really get a chance to…not say goodbye, but to end on my own terms.”
In spite of all of life’s uncertainty, Cox’s love of football hasn’t dimmed, though it is shimmering to a different hue.
“I do love it. But my love now is to play as long as possible as I’ll be a very long time retired. My love now is more geared up to the coaching side of things and helping young players be successful. So that’s being open to having my brains picked, and making sure I’m giving others a good opportunity, as I had a really good opportunity to play.
“That’s where my love is now. It’s not really just about how many goals I score this year and the assists I make, it’s how many appearances I make this season, and if I’m not starting, that I’m giving the guy starting ahead of me a chance to be successful, by helping him with his finishing and pushing him every day.”
