Sam Jepp was an enthusiastic and reliable footballer who would fill the breach at a moment’s notice. He had not long launched his Southampton career when he played in a Cup Final for Aldershot Athletic on Easter Monday morning and then for the Saints at The Dell in the afternoon. Then, at the end of the following season, he played three games in three days. That included being called up, while he was in Cowes with the Reserves, to play the next day at Bradford, which entailed getting there, by ferry and rail, that same night. In his first three Southern League games, he played at centre-forward, scoring on debut. In the next six, he played in five different positions.

By January 1909, however, he had pretty much made the centre-half position his own – and with some style, “invariably nurs[ing] the ball at his toe,” as the Echo observed, until he could “part with it to the advantage of his forwards,” invariably showing “much discretion in placing.”

Sam’s appearances began to tail off early in the 1910-11 season, at the end of which he had a season with South Farnborough in the Hants County League, while also turning out for the itinerant Surrey Wanderers. He then had a spell in Wales, initially with Swansea Town, newly-elected, in 1912, to the Southern League’s Second Division, and then with Aberdare of that same division. He served, during the First World War, with the Royal Irish Fusiliers, the Royal Hussars and the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. After which, he was back in Aldershot, turning out in local football.

He had been a printer/machinist in the 1901 census so it is quite possible he went back to that occupation – he also had a younger brother, Albert who played one game for the Reserves in 1907-08. He was also a useful cricketer and was one of four Saints first-team footballers who turned out for Southampton Wednesday C.C. during the summer of 1910 (see scrapbook section).