Mark Jones (15 June 1933 – 6 February 1958) was an English
footballer
A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugb ...
and one of eight
Manchester United
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The ...
players to lose their lives in the
Munich air disaster. Jones was born in
Wombwell, near
Barnsley
Barnsley () is a market town in South Yorkshire, England. As the main settlement of the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley and the fourth largest settlement in South Yorkshire. In Barnsley, the population was 96,888 while the wider Borough ha ...
,
West Riding of Yorkshire
The West Riding of Yorkshire is one of three historic subdivisions of Yorkshire, England. From 1889 to 1974 the administrative county County of York, West Riding (the area under the control of West Riding County Council), abbreviated County ...
in 1933, the third of seven children born to miner Amos Jones (1894–1968) and his wife Lucy (1896–1957). He was the club's first-choice
centre-half
In the sport of association football, a defender is an outfield position whose primary role is to stop attacks during the game and prevent the opposition from scoring.
Centre-backs are usually positioned in pairs, with one full-back on either s ...
for much of the 1950s and collected two
League Championship winner's medals.
Career
Jones signed for Manchester United as an apprentice on leaving school in 1948, and also worked an apprentice bricklayer for a while afterwards. He made his first two senior appearances for United in the
1950–51 season, aged 17, and by the time of United's title glory in
1955–56 he was a regular first team player, although he often found himself out of the team in favour of
Jackie Blanchflower (who was originally a wing-half or an inside-forward), having previously been understudy to the veteran
Allenby Chilton
Allenby C. Chilton (16 September 1918 – 15 June 1996) was an English footballer.
Playing career
Chilton started his career with Seaham Colliery before joining Liverpool as an amateur in the summer of 1938, but he never played a senior game ...
. By the time United won the league title in 1956, he was a regular member of the first team, and collected another league title medal the following year.
He missed the
1957 FA Cup Final defeat to
Aston Villa
Aston Villa Football Club is a professional football club based in Aston, Birmingham, England. The club competes in the , the top tier of the English football league system. Founded in 1874, they have played at their home ground, Villa Park, ...
because of an eye injury, although he did collect a second successive league title medal that season and helped United reach the semi-finals of the
European Cup
The UEFA Champions League (abbreviated as UCL, or sometimes, UEFA CL) is an annual club football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and contested by top-division European clubs, deciding the competit ...
. He played a total of 120 first team games for United (103 of them in the league), and scored once. He was selected in an England senior squad once, but did not take to the field. Many observers believe that he would have been capped by England had he not died at Munich. He came close to international action, having been selected on the substitutes' bench, but his hopes of a breakthrough were not helped by the fact that his career coincided with that of
Billy Wright. He was seen by many observers as a likely successor to Wright in the centre of the England defence.
Legacy
Jones is buried in
Wombwell near
Barnsley
Barnsley () is a market town in South Yorkshire, England. As the main settlement of the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley and the fourth largest settlement in South Yorkshire. In Barnsley, the population was 96,888 while the wider Borough ha ...
, his birthplace. He had moved from there in the early 1950s after turning professional with Manchester United and moving to
Flixton.
He was survived by his wife, June, and their two-year-old son, Gary. His daughter, Lynne, was born four months after the Munich air disaster, and June later remarried to a man called Herbert Barker. She died in February 2007, and was buried next to her first husband just weeks before the 49th anniversary of his death. His son Gary had a trial with Manchester United in the early 1970s but was not taken on by the club.
Jones was often nicknamed
Dan Archer by his teammates, in reference to his pipe-smoking habit similar to that of the character in the radio serial ''
The Archers
''The Archers'' is a BBC radio drama on BBC Radio 4, the corporation's main spoken-word channel. Broadcast since 1951, it was famously billed as "an everyday story of country folk" and is now promoted as "a contemporary drama in a rural set ...
''.
He was portrayed in a 2011
BBC film, ''
United'', by actor
Thomas Howes. The producers mistakenly cast him as the team captain, when in fact
Roger Byrne
Roger William Byrne (8 September 1929
England Football Online. Retrieved 6 June 20 ...
was captain of the United side at the time.
Career statistics
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jones, Mark
1933 births
1958 deaths
English footballers
Manchester United F.C. players
English Football League players
Association football central defenders
Footballers from Barnsley
Footballers killed in the Munich air disaster
Burials in Yorkshire