RIP Sandy Brown - ex Everton Defender

Former Everton defender Sandy Brown has passed away following a long illness.





Brown, who was 75, played 31 times for Everton during the League Championship winning campaign of 1969/70, having joined the Blues in September 1963 from Partick Thistle.



Renowned as an uncompromising, no-nonsense defender, the Scot was blessed with an instinctive ability to read the game and was at times deployed as a defensive midfielder by manager Harry Catterick. 





He was also a marauder, a full-back who liked to overlap and get down the wings, and he was famously called upon in one game as an auxiliary forward. 





It was a European Cup Winners' Cup second round second leg tie against Real Zaragoza in 1966, and Brown struck the only goal to earn Everton a 1-0 win. 

Unfortunately for the Toffees, they had suffered a 2-0 defeat in the first leg in Spain and their European adventure for that season came to an end.





Brown's strike was one of 11 he notched for the Club as he went on to rack up an impressive 253 appearances before departing Goodison for Shrewsbury Town in May 1971.





Before that he had contributed to Everton’s FA Cup success in 1966, playing four games en route to the Wembley final against Sheffield Wednesday.





After his time at Shrewsbury, Brown returned to Merseyside and played his final games for Southport before retiring from the game in 1973.