Few players in Everton history can boast a life less ordinary in the fashion of 1920s centre forward Jack Cock. By the time of his arrival at Goodison, he could already lay claim to being a war hero, big-screen actor, as well as the first Cornishman to play for England.

Born in Hayle in 1893, he made his way through a succession of London amateur clubs before turning out for Second Division Brentford as a 20-year-old amateur, then signing in 1914 for Huddersfield Town. But Cock was one of the generation of players who saw his early career wrecked by the outbreak of the First World War and he wouldn’t play league football again until his mid-twenties.

IN THE TRENCHES he served with distinction, rising to the rank of sergeant major and earning the Distinguished Conduct Medal and Military Medal for gallantry. During breaks from war duty he played for Croydon Common and Brentford and when peace resumed his form for Huddersfield in the early part of the 1919/20 season saw him selected for England in a victory international against Wales in October 1919. That same month he joined Chelsea for a club record £2500 and was prolific, scoring 22 goals in 30 games during his first season. His popularity saw him picked for England twice more and he played himself in the 1920 film, The Winning Game.

In January 1923 he joined an Everton team that had struggled for goals since the end of the war. The £2000 fee – with Cock getting a meagre £10 signing-on fee – was deemed good business for such a player. At 5ft 11in tall, Cock was nimble-footed and pacey rather than the centre forward archetype. ‘Cock, without doing anything brilliant, was quite satisfactory,’ the Daily Post and Mercury reported of his debut against Stoke City. ‘He frequently used his head effectively, and his experience in knowing where to place himself for a pass was of considerable help to the inside forwards. He made one splendid solo run in the second half, and instead of doing the obvious, shooting for goal, he placed the ball perfectly in the right wing.’

Everton won that game 4-0, with Cock scoring on his debut. Facing the same opponents a week later they lost 4-1, which exemplified some of the club’s problems at the time. Nevertheless the Cornishman scored nine goals in 15 matches in his first months at Goodison, helping them rise from 13th to fifth at the season’s end. He missed the early stages of the 1923/24 season because of flu, but after his return was ever-present as Everton once more finished fifth. One observer praised how he ‘controlled the younger forwards in nice style. He tells them what to do, when he will pass and how he will pass, and then encourages them to go on with the good work. His generalship counts for something.’ Indeed it did. Cock’s 23-year-old forward partner, Wilf Chadwick, ended the season as the First Division’s top goalscorer with 28 league goals.

However, a partnership that had yielded 43 goals in 1923/24 stuttered the next season. Everton scored just six times in the opening ten games and with relegation a threat Cock found himself dropped at Christmas.

He played just twice more for the Blues, his last match the February 1925 derby in which he missed two open goals as Everton fell to a 3-1 defeat. A month later the Everton board accepted a £2100 bid by Third Division Plymouth Argyle for Cock and Fred Forbes. Only three months earlier the club had resisted an offer from Arsenal for the forward, but atthat stage hadn’t a replacement lined up. The man they ultimately brought in a week before Cock left turned out to be rather good. His name? Dixie Dean.

AT PLYMOUTH Cock broke scoring record and was sold on to Millwall at a profit in 1927; within a year he helped win the club’first promotion to Division Two. In 1930 he appeared alongside a young Rex Harrison in the film The Great Game and although he had by now dropped out of league football he continued to turn out as a semi-professional until in his late thirties. Later he served as Millwall manager and also ran a pub near its south London home.