He initially trained as a butcher, before being called up to the army and stationed in West Africa during World War II.
He turned professional with the club in 1948, and had a thirteen-year-long career with them, making 340 league appearances and scoring four goals during that spell.
He moved to Trowbridge Town in 1961, where he stayed for two years before taking over as assistant manager of his former youth club, Oldland.
Away from football, Sampson had run a poultry business with his Bristol Rovers teammate Vic Lambden while playing in Bristol, and after his retirement from the sport he worked as a gardener and a milkman in his adopted home town of Cadbury Heath.
Towards the end of his life he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, and spent his last few years living at a nursing home in Congresbury near Bristol.