Ex-Rangers star, 31, signs for club in sixth tier of English football as free agent
Jordan Jones has found a new home. The 31-year-old winger, who once tore up the left flank for Rangers under Steven Gerrard and lifted a Wembley trophy on loan at Sunderland, has completed a move to South Shields of the National League North — the sixth tier of English football — after a summer spent as a free agent following his release from Carlisle United.
It is, on the surface, a striking image: a player who wore the Rangers jersey in the Europa League, who represented Northern Ireland at senior level for the best part of a decade, now lining up in front of a few hundred fans at Mariners Park rather than tens of thousands at Ibrox. But scratch beneath the headline and the story of how Jones has arrived here — reunited with a manager he trusts, chasing a fresh start rather than a final payday — tells you plenty about the unglamorous, unpredictable afterlife that awaits even accomplished professional footballers once their stock stops
South Shields confirmed the signing at the weekend, with the North East club moving quickly to secure Jones’s services once his availability became clear. A statement from the Mariners described the capture as adding “a wealth of EFL, SPFL, European, and international experience” to Mike Williamson’s dressing room — language that, while standard fare for a lower-league unveiling, is not exaggerated in Jones’s case. Few players turning out in the National League North this season will have European appearances or full senior international caps to their name, and Jones has plenty of both.
The move reunites Jones with Williamson, who managed him during his two-year stint at Carlisle United and clearly made enough of an impression that the winger was willing to follow him down the leagues rather than hold out for another EFL offer that may never have come. Williamson, the former Newcastle United, Wolves and Southampton defender turned coach, had a brief spell on Rangers’ backroom staff last season — arriving at Ibrox under Russell Martin before departing when Martin was sacked in October — before taking the reins at South Shields this summer following Ian Watson’s departure to Rochdale. That shared history at Ibrox, however fleeting for Williamson, adds a neat symmetry to the reunion: two men whose paths crossed at Rangers in very different capacities, now working together several divisions and several years removed from Glasgow.
Speaking after putting pen to paper, Jones was open about what drew him to the move. “I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity to represent the club and build on the great relationship I have with the manager,” he said, adding that the switch represented “an opportunity to fall back in love with football and do whatever it takes to bring success to South Shields.” It is a refreshingly honest way of framing a drop into the sixth tier — not as a comedown to be endured, but as a reset, a chance to rediscover the enjoyment that can get squeezed out of the game once injuries and inconsistent form start to pile up.
To understand why a 31-year-old with Jones’s CV is now playing National League North football, you have to trace a career that peaked relatively early and then found it increasingly difficult to regain that altitude.
Born in Bangor, County Down, in 1994, Jones qualified for Northern Ireland through his father and moved through the Kilmarnock academy before breaking into their first team. It was at Rugby Park that he first caught wider attention, developing into one of the Scottish Premiership’s more dangerous wide players — quick, direct, and always looking to get at full-backs — during a spell that eventually persuaded Rangers to make their move in 2019, luring him to Ibrox under Steven Gerrard.
His time at Rangers, though, never quite delivered on that early promise. Jones made only sporadic appearances in Gerrard’s side, with seven outings in the UEFA Europa League standing as the highlight of a stint that was ultimately defined more by loan spells than by a settled run in the first team. The most notable of those loans came in the 2020/21 season, when he joined Sunderland — then in League One — and was part of the Black Cats squad that lifted the EFL Trophy at Wembley, a rare winner’s medal in a career that has otherwise been short on silverware. He also spent time back in Scotland on loan at St Mirren and, in something of a full-circle moment, at Kilmarnock, the club that had given him his start.
By the summer of 2021, with Rangers under Gerrard closing in on a title-winning campaign and Jones no closer to a regular starting spot, the move became permanent in the other direction: Wigan Athletic snapped him up as he left Ibrox for good. His time at the DW Stadium (by then rebranded several times over) was mixed in its early stages — he struggled to nail down a consistent role under Leam Richardson — but by his final season, 2023/24 under Shaun Maloney, Jones had established himself as an important contributor to a Wigan side navigating League One. He was even offered fresh terms when his contract expired that summer, a sign that his stock, while not what it had been at Ibrox, had not collapsed either.
Instead, Jones opted for a switch to Carlisle United, linking up for the first time with Mike Williamson, who was then in charge at Brunton Park. It was here that the trajectory of his career took a harder turn. Jones spent two seasons at Carlisle, the first in League Two, the second in the National League following the club’s relegation — a demotion that, in itself, tells you much about the turbulence Carlisle have experienced in recent years. His time there was disrupted by a lengthy layoff with a thigh injury, and while he made 30 appearances for the Cumbrians across his stay, he ultimately left the club this summer by mutual agreement, two years into what had been a three-year contract.
That release left Jones without a club heading into pre-season, and by his own account he spent much of the summer at the Professional Footballers’ Association’s camp for out-of-contract players — the kind of unglamorous, faintly poignant institution that exists precisely for situations like his: talented professionals with real pedigree, but no obvious next step, working to stay fit and visible in the hope a phone call eventually comes.
Eventually, it was Williamson who made that call. Their relationship, forged over two seasons at Carlisle, proved the deciding factor once the South Shields job came up as an option. It is a reminder that in football’s lower reaches, trust and familiarity often count for more than reputation alone — clubs at this level cannot promise riches or a guaranteed route back up the pyramid, but they can offer a manager who knows exactly what a player provides and precisely how to use him.
For those unfamiliar with the club, South Shields — known affectionately as the Mariners — are one of English non-league football’s more ambitious projects. Based in the North East, they have built a reputation over the past decade for attracting attention beyond their level, whether through eye-catching cup runs, notable signings, or the kind of off-field investment that has allowed them to punch above their weight in the National League North.
Jones’s arrival comes at a time when Williamson is actively trying to reshape his squad following a productive but stretched start to the season. The Mariners have lost key personnel in recent weeks — midfielder Will Jenkins departed for Rochdale, while forward Sonny Finch moved on to Grimsby Town — and those exits, compounded by a run of injuries and suspensions, had left Williamson admitting his group had been relying on a core of just twelve or thirteen fit players through the opening weeks of the campaign. Speaking to the club’s local paper shortly before the deal was announced, Williamson had made no secret of his desire to strengthen, describing his squad as “thin” and stressing that his existing players needed reinforcement
That context makes Jones’s arrival less a marquee, look-at-us statement signing and more a solution to a genuine, practical problem — exactly the kind of signing that tends to matter more to a club’s season than the ones that make bigger headlines. A versatile, experienced wide player who has operated at Championship, League One and League Two level, as well as in the Scottish Premiership and in Europe, represents a significant upgrade in squad depth for a club fighting on a tight numbers budget in the sixth tier.
He will not be short of familiar faces in the Mariners dressing room, either. Several of his former Carlisle team-mates have also found their way to South Shields this year, including forward Cedwyn Scott, midfielder Adam Campbell, and the young pairing of Jordan Marshall and Dillon Morse, both of whom came through Carlisle’s academy. It amounts to something of a mini reunion of Williamson’s old Brunton Park squad, transplanted almost wholesale to Tyneside and Wearside’s non-league scene — a pattern common enough in the lower divisions, where managers often prefer to rebuild around players and relationships they already understand rather than gambling on unknowns.
Jones will also link up with another player with Scottish pedigree in winger Sean McGurk, a former Kilmarnock player himself, giving South Shields a notable contingent of players with SPFL experience feeding into their attacking options this season.
On the pitch, South Shields have made a solid start to the campaign under Williamson. The club’s most recent result — an away win at fellow National League North side Hednesford Town — saw them go ahead inside the first minute through a well-worked goal involving Campbell, McGurk and Paul Blackett, continuing what has so far been an unbeaten run for the Mariners this season. Williamson, never one for excessive celebration, was characteristically measured in his post-match assessment, acknowledging that his side had lacked control for spells of the game even as they ground out the three points — the kind of honest, no-frills appraisal that seems to run through his management style, and one that will be familiar to Jones from their time together at Carlisle.
It would be easy to reduce Jones’s move to a simple story of decline — a player who once wore Rangers’ colours in continental competition now grinding it out in front of modest crowds in the National League North. But that framing undersells both the player and the level he now finds himself at.
The sixth tier of English football has, in recent years, become an increasingly credible destination for experienced professionals looking for a fresh chapter rather than an ending. High-profile examples abound: Andy Carroll, the former Liverpool and England striker, dropped into the National League South this summer to join Dagenham & Redbridge, citing exactly the kind of motivation Jones has expressed — a desire to simply enjoy playing football again, wherever that takes him, rather than chase a bigger pay cheque at a level where he might barely feature. Jones’s own former Rangers team-mates have trodden similar paths in recent months: Martyn Waghorn, once a prolific scorer at Ibrox, signed for eighth-tier Anstey Nomads, while Kyle Lafferty, a three-time Scottish Premiership winner with Rangers, has continued his own remarkable non-league odyssey, most recently with Forth Wanderers in Scottish football’s West of Scotland Second Division.
What separates Jones from a player simply seeing out his career, though, is his age and his fitness situation. At 31, with the thigh problem that disrupted his Carlisle career now presumably behind him, there remains a genuine argument that this move is about resetting rather than winding down. Non-league football has, on plenty of occasions, proven to be exactly the kind of platform from which players rebuild their reputations and climb back into the professional pyramid — regular football, freedom from the pressures and expectations that come with a bigger club, and the chance to simply play with confidence again can do wonders for a career that has stalled.
For South Shields, the calculation is simpler: they have added a direct, versatile wide player with a genuinely rare level of pedigree for this tier of the English game, at a moment when their squad numbers needed exactly that kind of reinforcement. Williamson’s willingness to go back to a trusted former player, rather than take a chance on an unknown quantity, speaks to the value clubs at this level place on players who already understand what is required of them — tactically, physically, and in terms of the relentless week-to-week grind that non-league football
Jones’s move also serves as a reminder of just how unforgiving the pyramid beneath the Premier League and the SPFL top flight can be, even for players with genuine international experience. A winger capped by Northern Ireland across friendlies, World Cup qualifiers and Nations League fixtures, who played Europa League football for one of Scottish football’s two dominant clubs, is now six divisions below where he started his career at Kilmarnock, playing in front of crowds that would fit inside a corner of Ibrox.
It is not, by any means, a unique story. Football’s lower leagues are populated by players whose careers once promised far more than they ultimately delivered — through injury, through loss of form, through the simple bad luck of being at the wrong club at the wrong moment in a manager’s plans. What Jones’s situation illustrates, though, is the way a trusted relationship with a manager can outweigh almost every other factor when a player’s options start to narrow. Williamson did not sign Jones because he offered the highest available level of the National League North; he signed him because he knew, from two years of working with him at Carlisle, exactly what he would get — effort, know-how, and a wide player capable of hurting teams at a level far below where his talent was arguably suited.
For Rangers supporters, Jones’s move will likely register as little more than a footnote — a reminder of a squad member from the Gerrard era who never quite made the impact hoped for, now several rungs down the English football ladder. But for those who followed his loan exploits at Sunderland, or his eventual rehabilitation at Wigan under Shaun Maloney, there will be a genuine hope that this South Shields move represents not an ending, but the platform from which Jones can rediscover the form and fitness that once made him one of the more exciting Scottish Premiership wingers of his generation.
Whatever comes next, Jones’s own words on the move suggest a player at peace with where his career has taken him, and motivated by something more straightforward than status or salary. Falling back in love with football, as he put it, is as good a mission statement as any for a player starting again in the sixth tier — and if his early involvement helps South Shields maintain their unbeaten start to the season, Mike Williamson will not much care which division his new winger once graced.
