Although Scottish-born, Jimmy Carr progressed through Home Counties football to the Southern League with Watford and West Ham before the outbreak of war and then – after the war in which he’d guested as far afield as Portsmouth and Kilmarnock – with Reading. In his first two seasons at Elm Park, in the second of which Reading was among the founder-members of the Football League’s Division III, outside-left Jimmy formed a wing partnership with Len Andrews. After Len had left for The Dell in 1921, Jimmy had two more years at Reading, before he followed Andrews to Southampton, who had by now been promoted to Division II.

The two of them had only seven games together but, after Andrews left in the summer of 1924, Carr recovered from a knee operation to give the Saints two more seasons, the highlight of which was the 1925 FA Cup semi-final. Released by Southampton as his 36th birthday approached, Jimmy boldly – and most unusually – took an ad’ in the Athletic News, to announce his keenness to

“assist a club outside the league in exchange for a business”.

His long-term business venture, in the form of a pub, would have to wait while he had a season at Second Division Swansea. When he then took over the Red Lion Hotel at Southall, Jimmy achieved his advertised objective of combining football with business, by having a match-box cover designed with him, in his Saints kit, on one side and the name of the hotel on the other (see scrapbook section).

He couldn’t get a game, though. He hoped to play for Southall, but the Athenian League rejected his registration. He then joined Queens Park Rangers, but never kicked a first-team ball for them, either. He remained at the pub for many years and became so proficient at bowls that, at the age of 60, he represented England at the 1954 Empire Games in Vancouver, Canada.