In July 1956, as he looked forward to his first full season in charge, Ted Bates felt in need of re-inforcements that he had no money to buy. So having borrowed from the Supporters Club (see scrapbook), he headed north, accompanied by his wife, Mary.

The ostensible purpose of their journey was to have a holiday at Whitley Bay. But having arrived at their hotel, Ted “dumped” Mary, as she put it, and drove to Sunderland to spend the supporters’ loan on Jimmy Shields. Derry-born Jimmy had arrived at Roker Park, two years before, from Crusaders, having represented the Irish League in 1953. And he scored for Northern Ireland’s amateurs v Wales, shortly before he signed for First Division Sunderland.

He had not played first-team football there, when Ted Bates risked £1000 to bring him to Third South Southampton. Writing in 1992, Ted confessed to “being a very relieved young manager, when Jimmy justified the expenditure by scoring 18 goals in his first season.”  Jimmy had seen himself as an inside-forward, but Bates wanted him at No.9. Johnny Walker, who wore No.10 or No.11 that season, rated Jimmy as

“a real hard-grafting, run around, enthusiastic, typical tearaway centre-forward.”

Jimmy certainly thrived at No.9. On Boxing Day 1956, he brought his tally of goals to 14 in 24 League matches, including a double in the away win at QPR.

And he’d been capped by Northern Ireland in November. It’s no wonder, then, that he has looked upon the first half of that 1956-57 season as “the best I ever played in my whole career.” Although he finished the season with four goals in the last four games, Jimmy started 1957-58 in the Reserves. Again, he was four for four but, in scoring the last of those goals with his right foot, he broke his left leg, as it collided with the shoulder of Luton’s ’keeper. His season was over (see scrapbook). And with Derek Reeves and Charlie Livesey both among the goals in 1958-59, there was no permanent way back for Jimmy, for whom a Christmas flurry was his League swansong.

Moving to Southern League Headington, just before they changed their name to Oxford United, Jimmy hardly featured there. He returned to Sunderland, where he resumed his original trade as a joiner, while playing for a while at South Shields in the Northern Counties League. He stayed self-employed for five years and then worked in maintenance for the Sunderland PWD. He returned to The Dell in 1993 for a dinner to honour the man who had abandoned his wife to sign him. In recent years he had been in poor health and moved in with his step-daughter who lived in Alston. Taken ill on Christmas Eve 2019 he was taken to Carlisle Hospital where he died a few weeks later.