16 BACK FINISHER - Rowland Branston Cox - SON OF A SRFC INTERNATIONAL

Rowland Branston Cox was born in Sunderland in 1913 and was killed on service in 1944. He played in the backs for Sunderland in the early 1930s. He was the son of Norman Cox – Sunderland RFC, Barbarian and England player - and also first cousin to the Waterhouse brothers mentioned previously. Norman was responsible for the gas industry in Sunderland and Rowland was educated at Loretto College. He joined the Royal Air Force in 1936 and rose to the rank of wing commander during the war. Prior to the war he had seen action on the North West Frontier. During the  early part of the conflict, he saw service in North Africa and later worked closely with the Canadians. In September of that year his plane crashed landed in Surrey while taking passengers to a conference in Belgium. The plane was an Avro Anson. He is buried in Newport, Essex. His brother  Geoffrey John Burdon Cox (1910 -71)   was  a massive point scorer for club and county playing mostly in the centres .During the war he was a civilian with the task of keeping gas flowing in London. In 1941 he was awarded a British Empire Medal for bravery show in putting out gas related fires caused by air raids on the capital. Put together the two Cox ‘boys’ and their two Waterhouse  cousins made massive contributions to SRFC and the war effort.

There is much on Rowland online but not on his brother.