Sam Chedgzoy

Sam Chedgzoy is, by some distance, the most famous person to carry the Chedgzoy name. An outside-right for Everton across sixteen seasons and an eight-times England international, he is remembered above all for a single piece of mischief in the 1920s that forced the lawmakers of football to rewrite the rules of the corner kick. He was also, as the records below show, a cousin of this family: his line and ours both run back to the Chedzoys of Stoke St Gregory in Somerset.

From Ellesmere Port to Goodison Park

Sam was born in Ellesmere Port on the Wirral on 27 January 1889, the fifth of nine children of Henry Chedgzoy, a galvanised-iron labourer who had moved north from Bridgwater in Somerset, and his wife Frances. Everton signed him late in 1910 from the West Cheshire League side Burnell's Ironworks for a nominal fee, on wages of about £2 a week, and he made his first-team debut on Boxing Day 1910 in a 1–0 defeat to Newcastle United.

He stayed at Goodison Park for sixteen seasons. A quick, accurate right-winger, he was, by contemporary accounts, one of the first wingers to cut inside unexpectedly towards goal rather than simply hugging the touchline. In 1914–15 he was a key part of the Everton side that won the First Division championship, supplying the crosses for the prolific Bobby Parker.

When a young Dixie Dean arrived in 1925, the veteran Chedgzoy took him under his wing. Dean later remembered him as "a wonderful character, like a father to me", and credited Sam with teaching him how to read a winger's cross. Sam won his first England cap, aged 31, in a 2–1 defeat to Wales on 15 March 1920, and the last of his eight caps in a 3–1 win over Ireland at Goodison Park in October 1924.

The First World War

Chedgzoy enlisted in December 1915 under the Derby Scheme, joining the 2nd Battalion of the Scots Guards as a private (service number 15839) and training at Caterham in south London. Like many professionals, he played wartime football too, guesting for West Ham United in 1916–17. A knee injury in April 1917 put him in hospital for six weeks; he was posted to France that August and was finally demobilised on 23 October 1919, returning to Everton for the resumption of league football.

Career in numbers

He later became player-coach at Montréal Carsteel in Canada, winning league championships in 1936, 1939 and 1940.

The corner-kick that changed the rules

In June 1924 the Laws of the Game were changed to allow a goal to be scored directly from a corner kick. The new wording, though, did not actually say the kicker could not then play the ball a second time, and a Liverpool sports journalist spotted the gap. Ernest "Bee" Edwards of the Liverpool Echo wanted the loophole exposed in print. He first approached Liverpool's Donald McKinlay, who declined, then offered Everton's Sam Chedgzoy £2 to do it, asking him to win a corner inside the first twenty minutes "so I can feed my newspaper clients around the country with the full story".

So, against Arsenal at Goodison Park on 15 November 1924, in front of around 20,000 people, Chedgzoy took a corner by tapping the ball a few yards and running onto it, dribbling it infield rather than crossing. The referee, Henry Griffiths, was unsure; at half-time Sam showed him the rule book and Griffiths let it stand. The shot itself came to nothing, striking the side-netting, and Everton lost the match 3–2, Arsenal's winner arriving, fittingly, from an ordinary corner. But the point had been made, in print and on the pitch, and the controversy was reported across the football press of the day.

The Football Association declared that the removal of the old wording had been "inadvertent", and the loophole was duly closed at the International Football Association Board's meeting in 1925: the corner-taker still cannot touch the ball again until another player has played it. That rule stands to this day. A Chedgzoy, set up by a newspaperman, is directly responsible for the modern corner-kick law.

A second career across the Atlantic

Chedgzoy already knew North America, having spent the summers of 1922 and 1923 coaching the Grenadier Guards soccer team in Canada. In late May 1926 he left Everton for good, and that September signed for the New Bedford Whalers in the American Soccer League, then one of the strongest leagues in the world. He was a star there too, making 164 appearances and scoring 21 goals, winning the Lewis Cup and being picked for an ASL all-star side against Glasgow Rangers in 1928.

From 1930 he settled in Montreal as player-coach of the Canadian Car and Foundry company team, "Carsteel", and later coached the McGill University side. His teams reached seven National Soccer League play-off finals, winning the championship in 1936, 1939 and 1940. Remarkably, he made his last competitive appearance at the age of fifty, in the 1939 national-championship final against the Vancouver Radials.

A keen horseman and a useful golfer off a 12 handicap, Sam stayed in Quebec for the rest of his life. In 1964, after some sixty years apart, he was reunited with his sisters Edith, long settled in Montreal, and Lily, over from England. He died at Queen Mary's Veterans' Hospital, Quebec, on 7 January 1967, twenty days short of his 78th birthday.

Honours and legacy

Sam Chedgzoy was named one of Everton's "Millennium Giants" in 2000, as the club's Giant of the 1910s, and was inducted into the Canadian Soccer Hall of Fame in 2005, a rare distinction earned on both sides of the Atlantic. His son Sydney "Syd" Chedgzoy (1911–1983) followed him onto the wing, playing for Burnley, Millwall, Halifax Town, Sheffield Wednesday and Swansea Town in the 1930s before serving as a military policeman in Egypt during the Second World War.

How Sam connects to this family tree

Sam's father, Henry Chedgzoy, was born in Bridgwater, Somerset, in 1853 and died in Birkenhead in 1918, having moved to the Wirral for work. Bridgwater sits only a few miles from the village of Chedzoy that gives the family its name, and from Stoke St Gregory, the parish this side of the family comes from. The surname is so rare, and so tied to that one small corner of the Somerset Levels, that the two lines were always likely to meet. They do.

Tracing Henry's line back through the records on WikiTree leads to the same rare Chedzoy stock of Stoke St Gregory that this site's family comes from. With a surname this scarce, and so tightly bound to one small corner of the Somerset Levels, the two lines are almost certainly related. The exact connecting ancestor, though, is not yet proven by record: the older Stoke St Gregory generations are reconstructed from patchy parish registers rather than firmly documented, so I would rather flag the link as probable than claim a precise cousin distance the evidence cannot yet support.

Both branches come from the same tiny Stoke St Gregory Chedzoy family, so Sam and Chris are almost certainly cousins of some degree. Working out the precise distance depends on the generations above John (born 1798), and those are exactly the part of the tree that is not yet proven (see the note on that on the history of the Chedgzoy name page). Distant, then, and not yet pinned to an exact cousinship, but unmistakably the same rare family: a branch that left Stoke St Gregory for the north two centuries ago.

See Chris's direct line on the history of the Chedgzoy name page, and the wider family in the interactive family tree and the surname register.

A note on confidence: Sam's own descent through Henry and Charles back into the Stoke St Gregory Chedzoys is reasonably well supported. What is not yet proven is the exact ancestor that joins his branch to this one. The older Stoke St Gregory generations were long thought to run through Issacher Chedzoy (1771–1839), but that link has not held up, and an earlier reconstruction confused two different men both named John. Many early parish registers were lost in the Cromwell era, and Robert Chedzoy's 1685 will was destroyed when the Exeter Probate Registry was bombed in 1942, which is why the deepest part of the tree can be sketched but not proved line by line. Corrections from fellow researchers are very welcome.

Common questions

Is the footballer Sam Chedgzoy related to the Chedgzoy family of Somerset?

Yes. Sam's father, Henry Chedgzoy, was born in Bridgwater, Somerset, in 1853, a few miles from the village of Chedzoy that gives the surname its name. Sam descends from the same rare Chedzoy family of Stoke St Gregory as Chris Chedgzoy, whose line is documented on this site, so the two are almost certainly cousins. The exact connection is not yet proven by record, because the older Stoke St Gregory generations cannot yet be traced line by line.

Where was Sam Chedgzoy from?

He was born in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, on 27 January 1889, the fifth of nine children. The family had moved north from Bridgwater in Somerset for work.

Who changed the corner-kick rule, and why?

Sam Chedgzoy. In 1924, after the law was changed to allow goals direct from a corner, he exploited a gap in the wording by dribbling the ball in from the corner flag, a stunt set up by the Liverpool Echo journalist Ernest 'Bee' Edwards. The authorities then closed the loophole, ruling that the corner-taker cannot touch the ball again until another player has, which remains the law today.

Did Sam Chedgzoy actually score from the corner?

No. The shot struck the side-netting and Everton lost the match 3 to 2 to Arsenal at Goodison Park on 15 November 1924. The aim was to expose the loophole rather than to score, and it worked.

What happened to Sam Chedgzoy after Everton?

He emigrated in 1926, starring for the New Bedford Whalers in the American Soccer League, then settling in Montreal as a player-coach, where he won league titles and played his last game aged fifty. He died in Quebec on 7 January 1967 and was inducted into the Canadian Soccer Hall of Fame in 2005.

References & further reading

Everything used to compile this page, with credit to each source, gathered here so other researchers can follow the same trail. External links open in a new tab.

Biography & career

• Wikipedia: Sam Chedgzoy — career, caps, dates, career table
• Wikipedia: Sydney Chedgzoy — Sam's son's playing career
• Everton FC Heritage Society: A Star on Both Sides of the Atlantic — the fullest biography: father Henry of Bridgwater, the spelling story, 1914–15 title, Dixie Dean, North America, the 1964 reunion
• ToffeeWeb: A Star on Both Sides of the Atlantic — mirror of the Heritage Society article
• England Football Online: Sam Chedgzoy — England career and caps
• Everton FC: Sam Chedgzoy (former players) and Everton Giants profile
• Where Are They Now?: Sam Chedgzoy
• Football and the First World War: Sam Chedgzoy — Scots Guards service record
• Canada Soccer: Sam Chedgzoy — Canadian Soccer Hall of Fame profile
• Canadian National Soccer League: Great Players — Sam Chedgzoy — his Montreal years
• Wikidata: Sam Chedgzoy (Q459024) — structured data and cross-references

Statistics & records

• Everton Results: Chedgzoy season-by-season — appearances and goals by season
• EnglandStats: Sam Chedgzoy (#393) — each England cap

The corner-kick & press coverage

• EFC Statto: The Chedgzoy Corner — the definitive reconstruction of 15 November 1924, the Liverpool Echo's Ernest "Bee" Edwards and the £2 arrangement
• The Football Pink: Corners, controversy, loopholes and law changes — wider rule-history context
• The History of Arsenal: November 1924 — the same match from Arsenal's side
• Play Up, Liverpool: The death of Sam Chedgzoy — his January 1967 obituary
• Contemporary newspapers (via the British Newspaper Archive, subscription): Athletic News, Liverpool Daily Courier, Lancashire Evening Post (20 September & 1 November 1924), Gloucestershire Echo, the Liverpool Echo (Will Cuff's later account) and the Montreal Star (December 1964, the sisters' reunion)

Genealogy & family records

• WikiTree: Chedgzoy surname index — every Chedgzoy profile in one place
• The line to Sam: Henry (1853–1918), Charles (1825–1890), John (c.1798), Issacher (1771–1839) — the shared common ancestor
• Collateral branch: Edmund (1834–1888), John William (1874)

Photographs (where held)

• No freely-licensed photograph of Sam is currently known. Period images are held by the Everton FC Heritage Society and, as commercial reproductions, by Vintage Footballers. Any photograph from his playing days (1910–1926) is likely out of copyright by age; if you hold or find one under a free licence, please get in touch.

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