Australian Football

Recruited from Speed, near Ouyen¹, Jim Jones came to Carlton in 1937, and was described by Forward in The Age as "the best recruit seen at Carlton for some time"² after playing two practice matches on the last weekend in March of that year. However, it was not until 1939 that he eventually broke into the Blues' senior side.

Jones kicked goals regularly for the Blues' reserves side in 1937 (including bags of seven and eight against Richmond and St Kilda respectively), before spending the latter half of the 1938 season excelling at centre half-back.³

When his chance at senior football finally did come, in round 10 of 1939 against St Kilda, Jones failed to grasp it, having very little impact as a forward pocket in a 21-point loss. Jones may have been a little bit unlucky, as he had again spent much of his time in the reserves in the first half of the season at either full back or centre half-back, and would have had little recent experience on the forward line.

Jones was selected only twice more in that season. As 19th man, he came on at quarter time in Carlton's round 12 match against South Melbourne, and although he "impressed the critics with his determined relieving dashes"⁴, had to wait another fortnight before being selected once more, again as 19th man. In that match, against North Melbourne, he did not make it onto the field until the final term, and was omitted the following week.

In the early stages of the 1940 season, The Age opined that Jones was one of several Carlton "colts" that would gain a regular place with most other sides. He was given a senior opportunity with the Blues in round three, only to injure a knee. He returned to the side in late June, and played five games in six weeks before injury intervened again, a sprained ankle forcing him from the field in the last quarter of the Blues' round 15 win over Melbourne.

That was to be Jones's last VFL match for more than four years, with World War II scuppering any further chance he had of establishing himself as a regular. He enlisted in the army, and later transferred to the RAAF, and did not appear in a Carlton jumper again until 1945. Upon his return to the field, he was installed as a full back but, after he sprained his ankle in a 100-point loss to Essendon in round three (the Blues' heaviest defeat in their history to that point) he did not reappear in the senior side, which went on to contest — and win — the infamous 'Bloodbath' Grand Final.

In 1946, Jones was given one last try in the key defensive post and he started extremely well, holding South star Bob Pratt to just two majors in the Blues' eight-point win over the Swans in an opening-round Grand Final rematch. The Sporting Globe had this to say about his efforts: "Full back Jim Jones was a clear winner over Bob Pratt and, dashing away with the ball, turned play to the opposite wing and opened up the way to a brilliant passage that gave Carlton the goal which clinched the issue."⁵

But the Globe went on to explain why Jones's place would never be safe: "Yet Vin Brown is the team's full back. Pity Carlton can't enter two teams. It would save many headaches and heart-burnings."⁵ And it wasn't only Vin Brown putting pressure on Jones's place in the team. According to Blueseum¹, it was Ollie Grieve ultimately who usurped him for the the key defensive post in 1946, going on to make it his own over the next several seasons. 

Omitted from the Carlton side — once again through injury — after the Blues' round five win over North Melbourne, Jim Jones's VFL career finally ground to a halt after never getting a chance to take off. He finished with a very modest tally of 15 games to his credit, far fewer than he might have hoped on his arrival to Princes Park seven years earlier.

Author - Andrew Gigacz