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A midfield player blessed with guile, precision and discipline, many saw the potential in the teenage Gordon Cowans of the late 1970s to become England's chief playmaker of the next decade. The emergence of Glenn Hoddle put paid to that supposition, though it remained a surprise that Ron Greenwood never took a look at Aston Villa's primary creator at a time when Villa were winning the top honours in both England and Europe, although winger Tony Morley and striker Peter Withe were put through international paces prior to the 1982 World Cup.
Bobby Robson's takeover of the job afterwards finally brought a debut for 'Sid' in the 1983 Home Internationals, when England beat Wales 2-1 at Wembley and such was the maturity of his display that the coach felt he was worthy of a key role in the midfield when England took on Hungary in a must-win qualifier for the 1984 European Championships and duly grasped the points in a 2-0 win, with Cowans in good form. A 0-0 Home International dirge against Northern Ireland followed, before Gordon attained darling status among the Wembley faithful when he scored England's second goal in a 2-0 win over the Scots. This was promising stuff, especially as Robson's faith in Villa's playmaker was being matched by Italian scouts who were checking over the new young star of England's midfield.
Cowans stuck around for the 1983 tour of Australia, starting and completing all three games in the space of a week, but was crucially absent when Denmark visited Wembley for another must-win European Championship qualifier. England offered little from the centre of the park and lost 1-0 and Cowans' momentum was lost further when, having moved to Bari, he sufferd a horrendous broken leg which kept him out of the game and the picture for long enough to guarantee a renaissance for Hoddle and allow Robson to establish a new attacking force based on wingplay, with Bryan Robson and Ray Wilkins providing steadier, if less glamorous fayre through the middle. Cowans won an eighth cap in January 1986 as England drubbed Egypt 4-0 in Cairo as part of a gentle re-introduction to international football, surrounded by a highly inexperienced England team, but there was little chance of him changing Robson's midfield philosophy as Mexico approached and, despite winning a further cap against the USSR two months later, he didn't make the plane.
An infamous one-off turn as an uninjured Paul Gascoigne's entirely tactical replacement against the Republic of Ireland (see photo above) in late 1990 - by which time he was back at Villa and playing superbly - gave him more headlines than anything he'd ever achieved in his career, and amidst all the artless, out-of-context guff written about Graham Taylor's decision to drop Gascoigne and bring back Cowans for the European Championship qualifying group match, the return was slightly anti-climactic but not disastrous as England scraped a 1-1 draw in Dublin and did their qualification credentials no harm at all. Cowans' cause wasn't helped by Taylor's tendency to reveal his team and tactical strategy to the Press long before a game was due to kick off, but in any event he wasn't retained by Taylor thereafter and a tally of ten caps seemed scant reward for a career and a talent which could have defined a whole England decade but for injury. (Matthew Rudd)
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