Mason Cox talks his ‘one in a million’ career ahead of his 100th game

Mason Cox’s AFL career was over — according to some — early in 2018. A few months later, he played the defining game of his career. He remembers that final with Glenn McFarlane.

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA – MAY 21: Mason Cox of the Magpies high fives fans after winning the round 10 AFL match between Carlton Blues and Collingwood Magpies at Melbourne Cricket Ground, on May 21, 2023, in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

AFL trailblazer Mason Cox laughs when asked what he would tell the 23-year-old version of himself who was headed to the US International Combine in Los Angeles in April 2014 if he had the benefit of hindsight.

Back then, the American had never even heard of Collingwood, hadn’t learnt to kick a Sherrin and barely knew a thing about Australia, let alone about Australian football.

“I would say to him ‘a lot of s*** is going to happen … (good and bad) between then and now’,” Cox told the Herald Sun.

It’s been some sort of ride for the 32-year-old who will play his 100th AFL game for Collingwood against North Melbourne on Sunday – a milestone that is surely one of the most extraordinary stories in the code’s 165-year history.

Cox’s skipper Darcy Moore told US 60 Minutes recently the American’s journey from 211cm soccer hopeful and college basketballer to a career lasting nine seasons (so far) in a foreign sport on the other side of the world was “one in a million”.

The man himself suspects the odds might have even been longer.

Cox has had one of the most remarkable football journeys we have seen. (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

He shares his 100th game this week with Steele Sidebottom’s 300th game – only the fourth Magpie to reach that tally – and is keen to ensure his teammate gets most of the attention.

Cox said: “I didn’t really understand how counting games was a sense of accomplishment in the league, especially at that point for me.”

“There have been ups and downs and almost everything you could imagine in a footy career – injuries and all that kind of stuff, and the loneliness and isolation of being so far from home.

“It’s a humbling moment to sit back and appreciate what has happened, and how we got here.”

Cox’s parents, Phil and Jeanette, have followed every one of their son’s giant steps along the way, often through bleary eyes in the ungodly early morning hours in Texas.

Thankfully, they are in town for their ninth trip to Australia to see their son in black and white.

“I just wanted to say how proud we are of Mason,” his mum Jeanette said. “It has taken a lot of hard work. But it’s a real credit to the club for their work too.”

Dad Phil described it as “a tremendous journey … I love all the little traditions – the team song; going through the banner, the grand final parade between the two teams. There is an emphasis on the game, more so than the sideshow.”

Collingwood big man Mason Cox and parents Phil and Jeanette. Pic: Michael Klein

Cox’s journey has had almost everything – soaring highs, a few serious injuries, some plummeting lows that saw him out of favour at Collingwood and two ‘almost’ trades.

“It’s been pretty crazy, man,” Cox explains. “I’m 32 now and into my ninth year of playing. I came out with a three-year contract thinking this will be a nice little vacation, and if it goes well, it goes well … but I knew the chances of that happening were pretty unlikely.

“I suppose it just shows that hard work and determination pays off if you stick to a cause.”

LEARNING WITH FLY

If it hadn’t been for Craig McRae, Mason Cox would almost certainly never have reached 100 games or still been at Collingwood now.

It’s a debt Cox is still trying hard to repay.

McRae was the Magpies’ head of development when Cox landed in Australia with no understanding of the game he was about to immerse himself in.

“Craig McRae was really the first person I properly met in Australia,” Cox recounted.

“Now to be at the back end of my career, it’s nice to be able to try and repay what he put into me in those early days. It’s pretty cool to be a part of what he is trying to create at the club.”

McRae and Anthony Rocca worked on Cox’s skills on a daily basis in 2015.

“Those early days were tough,” he said. “He and Anthony Rocca, and (recruiting/list manager) Derek Hine were kind of my only two friends here early on. They would take me out for dinner, have me over for their family dinners, and have Thanksgiving dinners for me.”

“It made me feel like I had a family away from home. They were the inner circle who helped me through those kinds of darker times. I wouldn’t be here without Fly.”

So did Cox consider moving home in those dark times?

“I am a stubborn prick. I don’t give up on anything,” he said.

Cox says he remains indebted to the Collingwood coach. (Photo by Darrian Traynor/Getty Images)

ANZAC DEBUT

Cox always aspired to play in front of big crowds – and 85,082 fans (including his family) turned up to watch his 2016 Anzac Day debut.

He joined the first-kick first-goal club within 139 seconds.

“My favourite moment was his debut on Anzac Day,” Jeanette said. “That was incredible.”

Cox added: “The big games have always been the most enjoyable; they are the ones that count. Trav Cloke came on my podcast and said ‘Man, the 80-90,000 crowds, the finals and big game are the ones that count’. That’s always been my mentality going into them.”

Cox played 11 games in his first year, with another nine coming in 2017, split between the AFL and VFL.

Josh Smith, Mason Cox and Jeremy Howe of the Magpies sing the club song after the Pies’ Anzac Day win. (AAP Image/Julian Smith)

THE YEAR IT ALL CHANGED

2018 was the tipping point for Cox – he had to make the most of his chances or he would be out of the system before long.

He played what he considered the worst game of his AFL career in round 1 against Hawthorn, having six disposals, no marks (spilling a few) and copping a one-game ban for striking.

The critics were out in force, suggesting the Cox experiment was over.

Then the wheels turned.

Two of his best games came in that defining season. He kicked five goals and won the Neale Daniher Trophy on Queen’s Birthday.

Then came preliminary final night, 2018. Richmond were overwhelming favourites, but a Cox-inspired Collingwood produced one of the great finals ambushes.

In his 43rd AFL game, Cox’s performance was so significant that Bruce McAvaney famously said: “What has Collingwood unleashed here”.

He had 15 disposals, took 11 marks and kicked three goals to help the Magpies advance to the grand final.

Near the end, Cox cheekily looked across at the Richmond bench and spotted McRae, who had moved to become the Tigers’ VFL coach. He said: “You did this!”

“I talked a bit of trash against the Tigers, that’s for sure”,” Cox said, even if his ‘You did this’ comment was more about how much McRae had helped him achieve that moment.

That night was the genesis of the Collingwood army’s “USA” chant, which brings a smile to Phil Cox’s face, whether live or on television. “It is so much fun, oh my goodness,” Phil says.

But sadly a fairytale premiership was cruelly denied to Collingwood, and Cox, the next week.

Cox’ 2018 preliminary final performance against the Tigers is etched into football folklore. (AAP Image/Julian Smith)

INJURY SETBACKS

One of Phil Cox’s biggest worries about his son taking on Australian football was the risk of serious injury.

“It was always a concern from day one,” Phil said. “We had seen videos of it (AFL football) and we were like ‘Oh, we are not so sure about this’.

“He has been through a couple of serious injuries, but we are happy with the doctors who have looked after him. They don’t rush him back.”

An accidental poke in the eye in 2019 off the back of a detached retina arising out of the 2018 grand final put a question mark on his career.

He would go on to have six eye surgeries.

Cox said: “I remember getting both eye surgeries done at the same time and I was essentially blind for a bit. I was literally feeling (his way) around the house to get around.”

He returned with the glasses for protection, and while he had some ill-advised criticism for wearing them, he may not have been able to return without them.

“Losing a sense (sight) even for a period is a weird feeling,” he said. “You kind of take it for granted every single day. It was tough, man … the two weeks of 45 minutes every hour on my back and you can only get up to take a p — and then you go back to lying on your back again.”

Cox now plays with glasses due to an injury to his eye. Pic: Michael Klein

The more recent issue with a lacerated spleen – which cost him five games earlier this year – was almost as challenging.

“The recent one was misdiagnosed by the radiologists,” he said. “I essentially went back out to training with two or three litres of blood inside me, thinking it was just a bruised rib. It’s probably the worst thing you can do is to go back out and bash bodies against people, which is exactly what I was trying to do to prove myself to play on the weekend.”

The pain wouldn’t go away.

“I got through it, but I was still in quite a bit of pain,” he said. “I was quite nauseous and was having symptoms which were not related to the rib. I spoke to the doctor and he said we will make the radiologist have a second look at it over at the hospital.

“He had a second look and he said ‘Yes, you have a lacerated spleen, you have got internal bleeding, you need to see a doctor straight away. The next morning, I was under the knife.”

On both occasions, his mum Jeanette offered to come out to help. “It took everything not to get on a plane and come out here,” she said.

Cox laughed: “I literally said to her ‘don’t come’,” he said. “I live in a one-bedroom apartment … I love my mom, but I think it probably would have made the situation even worse.”

The big America has missed five games this season due to a laceration on his spleen. (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)

COVID AND TRADE OPTIONS

When Covid shut down the world for a time in 2020, it made the separation between Cox and his family – including two brothers – exceptionally tough.

“It was like we were living in two different worlds,” Cox said.

Phil added: “That was no fun. There weren’t any flights. You couldn’t get a visa and you couldn’t even get into the country.”

Jeanette said: “You didn’t know if it was going to be a few months or a few years.”

This coincided with Cox’s career at Collingwood being at the crossroads, with Sydney expressing an interest in recruiting him at the end of 2020.

“Those were the days of Covid, so it was interesting trying to get a medical without physically seeing someone,” he said. “I was up at Hamilton Island. But they decided to go for Tom Hickey, which has worked out well for them.”

A year later coach Nathan Buckley parted with Collingwood. Cox looked to be leaving too.

“I was back in the States and not sure if there was going to be anything here financially to come back to,” he said.

Cox was well refreshed in the “sponsored tent” at the Austin City Limits music festival in late 2021 when he was told Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir wanted to speak.

“I’d had a few drinks, and I said to my brother ‘I have to sober up in the next 15 minutes’.”

Then fate intervened.

McRae was appointed senior coach at Collingwood. Cox knew he had to stay a Magpie.

“When Craig McRae came back, that was probably the only way I was going to come back to Collingwood and play there,” he said.

They had unfinished business.

Cox almost left the club twice before McRae came to be the senior coach. Pic: Michael Klein

TOUGH CHAT

Cox played only two AFL games of McRae’s first five last year, having been banished for a time back to the VFL.

Then the coach invited him around to his house for dinner – and a chat.

“It was one of those moments when I sat down with his family,” Cox recalled. “He is always a big advocate of playing to your strengths and backing yourself, so it was a conversation of him saying: ‘this is a time in your career where you can take it by the horns and make something of it, or you can go the other way’.”

“He said ‘We are not giving up on you by any means, we want to get the most out of you’.”

Cox hasn’t looked back. He played 16 consecutive games at the back end of last season and has now played five games this season, missing only due to his spleen issue.

Cox is now a regular contributor in the high-flying Pies. Pic: Michael Klein

FUTURE

Cox is a dual citizen of Australia and the United States so a decision on his future beyond football isn’t an issue now.

“Wherever I end up, I end up, but at least I have the option,” he said of becoming an Australian citizen in 2022. “I can go wherever I want.”

“It was kind of a cool moment in my life to have acceptance of government standards to say you are a part of the country that you have given a chunk of your life to. The same week as that I actually got a ‘skin name’ from an Aboriginal tribe back in Queensland.

“I always feel like I’ve had a cool connection with Indigenous communities.”

Cox came so close to premiership success in 2018 and it is something which drives him, but he says it won’t define him.

“It would be an amazing addition to the story, which is already pretty crazy in itself,” he said. “But that’s all too far ahead to think about now.”

Cox’s 100th game will also do one more thing. Any future daughter he might have was already eligible to play for Collingwood, but now a future son would now be under the father-son possibility.

He added with a smile: “That’s true, or he could play in the NBA, and it might be my retirement (fund).”

Originally published as Mason Cox talks his ‘one in a million’ career ahead of his 100th game