Jones Jimmy Image 1 Belfast Celtic 1948

Description

Keady, County Armagh born centre forward Jimmy Jones had as remarkable a football career as any.  Starting his career during the Second World War, he played for Sunnyside and Glenavon Juniors, then Shankill Young Men, from where he signed for Elisha Scott’s Belfast Celtic in 1946. The following year he was capped at youth level by Northern Ireland. Jones made an immediate impact with Belfast Celtic. After spending his first season with the reserve side, he scored 62 goals in all competitions in the 1947-48 season for the senior side. Such was his ability that his club rejected a £16,000 offer from Newcastle United. During the following season, Jones had 27 goals from 19 games (including six hat-tricks), prior to an infamous match on Boxing Day 1948 with Linfield. At the end of the match, Linfield supporters invaded the pitch and Jones was chased onto terracing and stamped on until his leg was broken. Due to the outcry over this incident, Belfast Celtic resigned from the league at the end of the season and left football. ones had surgery to save his leg (which left his right leg shorter than the left), but would not play again until March 1950. He was officially released from his Belfast Celtic contract on March 1, 1950, having scored 102 goals in 80 games.

In 1951, he joined Glenavon where he would spend 11 years and became a club legend. He was the leading Irish League goalscorer for some years in the 1950’s, and finished as Irish League outright leading goalscorer in six seasons (a record still unbroken), during the most successful period in Glenavon’s history where they won the Irish League Championship and Irish Cup three times each. Jones also hit 74 goals (in all competitions) during the 1956-57 Irish League season. He scored 517 goals in total for the Lurgan Blues. Jones later served as club captain on the teams tour of the United States in 1962. Jones scored three goals in the Irish League representative team which defeated the Football League 5-3 at Windsor Park in 1953, and played in three full international games for Northern Ireland in 1956 and 1957, scoring once against Wales in Cardiff in the 1956 British Home Championship.

Jones later represented Irish League sides Portadown in 1963-64 and Bangor in 1964-65, spending a season with each club. He scored 14 goals in 28 games for Portadown and 14 goals in 26 games for Bangor. His final season was spent in the Irish League B Division (which was then the second-tier of football in Northern Ireland) with Newry Town, where he scored 32 goals in 32 games before retiring in 1965 with a national domestic record of 647 goals. He is the leading goalscorer in the history of Irish League football with a total of 647 goals. his total of more than 809 goals in official matches, which makes him one of the most prolific goal scorers of all time.