McCormick Jimmy Image 1 Plymouth Argyle 1911

Description

Rotherham, Yorkshire born right half Jimmy McCormick began his football career with Thornhill United and played for Attercliffe in 1904, from where he was signed by First Division club Sheffield United in 1905, making his Football League debut against Woolwich Arsenal that September. Never a regular in The Blades line up in his two seasons at Bramall Lane, he scored once, in a 1-1 draw with Bury in March 1906, in 22 matches for The Blades, before a move to Southern League club Plymouth Argyle in the 1907 close season.

A regular for The Pilgrims, he clocked up 8 goals in 127 matches over three seasons during his first spell in Devon, but returned briefly to Sheffield United in 1910, playing one further match for The Blades that September and is possibly to do with the death of his wife around the same time. Returning to Plymouth in December, he played regularly through to the suspension of peacetime football in May 1915 due to the onset of the First World War, during which he served in The Footballer”s Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment, during which, in one offensive, McCormick was wounded by shrapnel in the forehead and temporarily blinded by skin and blood. He picked up a wounded comrade whose legs had been shattered, who guided him the wrong way down the trench and they were captured. He ended up four days later in a prisoner of war camp in Saxony.

When the First World War ended, McCormick was repatriated and spent some time in hospital recovering from malnutrition but had recovered by the time peacetime football resumed. He played again for Argyle through the 1919-20 season, taking over at centre-half and captain after Harry Wilcox retired early in the season, scoring twice in 37 matches for Argyle to take his total to 26 goals in 310 matches for Plymouth Argyle. Then in June 1920 he emigrated to Canada, where later he was hired to captain Ladysmith Football Club on Vancouver Island.