Goalkeeper Roger Jones holds the honour of captaining York City to their only major trophy when they won the Fourth Division championship in 1983-84.
Goalkeeper Roger Jones holds the honour of captaining York City to their only major trophy when they won the Fourth Division championship in 1983-84.
Jones was born in Upton-Upon-Severn and served his apprenticeship at Portsmouth. But he didn’t make his Football League debut until moving to Bournemouth, where he went on to complete 160 league appearances and also earned England under-23 international recognition against Hungary in 1968.
That brought him a switch to Blackburn Rovers in January 1970, and he proceeded to make 242 league appearances at Ewood Park. Following a short spell with Newcastle United, he eventually linked up with Stoke City, where he was to come into direct contact with his future manager at York, Denis Smith. He totalled 101 league games in the Potteries before then appearing 59 times in the league for Derby County until a free transfer move to York in August 1982.
Jones certainly lived up to his billing and proved a truly excellent acquisition at Bootham Crescent, where he gave three years of outstanding service and 141 senior games before retiring twelve months after gloriously leading the club to the fourth division title. Indeed the photograph of Jones proudly standing with the trophy aloft remains one of the most iconic pictures in York City’s history.
In total, Jones made almost 800 senior appearances during an outstanding playing career before finally going into coaching at Sunderland.
