Landmark season in store for Sammo written by Frank Grande for Ian Sampsons Benefit season book.

All things being equal early on in the 2001/02 Nationwide League Division Two season,lan Sampson will become only the ninth Northampton Town footballer to havemade 300 league appearances for the club.

Sammo has already passed that landmark in terms of overall league appearances,but a number of those were with his previous club Sunderland.

The 3-0 final day home defeat to Walsall on 6 May 2001 was the 296th time that lan had pulled on a league shirt for the Cobblers-so only four more to go!

Of the eight players currently ahead of him,lan has every chance of overhauling five of them to move into fourth postion come the end of 2001/02.

First in his sights is Ron Patterson （300),just one appearance behind both Len Hammond and Jack English（301).

Roly Mills has 305 to his name and not far ahead of him is Joe Kiernan,who made 308 appearances during the glory years.

Willie Watson(326)is also within reach but Sammo will have to wait until thefollowing season to have a chance of overhauling Peter Gleasure’s total of 344.

And he’ll have to play another five full seasons to have any chance of catching up the runaway leader Tommy Fowler(522),the Cobblers Legend. When it comes to overall appearances for the Cobblers-league games, Cup and other games-Sammo is already seventh in the chart and once again fourth place is in his immediate sights.