Playing Career
In his playing days he was a central defender, beginning his professional career in 1990 when Sunderland signed him from non-league Goole Town. He only made 21 appearances in four years however, before joining Northampton in 1994 after a successful loan spell. He played for the Cobblers for 10 years, making 449 appearances, placing him second in the list of appearance makers behind Tommy Fowler. Sampson retired from the game at the end of the 2003–04 season. He had a brief loan spell at Tottenham in 1995, featuring in their makeshift squad for the Intertoto Cup. He even managed to score during Spurs' only victory in the campaign against NK Rudar Velenje.
Read more about this topic: Ian Sampson
Famous quotes containing the words playing and/or career:
“A daughter of Eve ... had better be fifty leagues off—or in her warm bed—or playing with a case-knife—or any thing you please—than make a man the object of her attention, when the house and all the furniture is her own.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)