One year ago today, on July 22, 2025, Welsh football lost a man who fans across three different clubs all seemed to agree on: Joey Jones simply gave everything he had, every single time he stepped onto the pitch. He was 70 when he died, and if his name doesn’t immediately ring a bell for American readers, there’s a good chance his club does. Jones spent most of his career at Wrexham, the small Welsh club that became a household name in the US thanks to Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s ownership and the hit docuseries “Welcome to Wrexham.”
Jones was born in Llandudno, Wales, in March 1955, and grew up an obsessive Liverpool fan, the kind of kid who got the club’s Liver Bird emblem tattooed on his arm long before he ever imagined playing for them. He started his professional career at Wrexham in 1971, and by 1975, after helping the club reach an FA Cup quarter-final as a lowly Third Division side, Liverpool came calling. Manager Bob Paisley paid £110,000 for him, a club record fee at the time for a player from outside the top division.
At Anfield, Jones became exactly the kind of player supporters love even when he wasn’t the flashiest name on the team sheet. He was a left-back known for hard, uncompromising tackles, and in 1977 he became the first Welshman ever to win the European Cup, doing it again a year later when Liverpool defended the title. Fans that season famously unfurled a banner reading “Joey ate the frogs’ legs, made the Swiss roll, now he’s Munching Gladbach,” a reference to Liverpool’s run through the tournament that season, which tells you something about how beloved he’d already become.
After three years at Liverpool, Jones moved on to Chelsea and later Huddersfield Town, but it was Wrexham where he truly became a legend. He returned there for two more spells as a player, racking up 376 league appearances across three separate stints with the club, and later stayed on in coaching roles, even serving as caretaker manager in 2001. He also earned 72 caps for Wales between 1975 and 1986, and at the time of his international retirement he was his country’s most capped player ever.
What people remember most, though, wasn’t really about the trophies. It was his trademark clenched fist salute before matches, a gesture that became a ritual for fans at every club he represented. As one BBC tribute put it, Jones was “a fierce competitor and loveable character,” someone who never sought the spotlight despite being one of the most recognizable figures in Welsh football history.
Wrexham didn’t let his memory fade quietly. The club announced plans to build a permanent statue of him outside the Racecourse Ground, and fans from around the world raised more than five thousand pounds to fund a mural of his famous celebration on the side of a pub next to the stadium. A local Wrexham landlord who helped organize the tribute said Jones “epitomised what this town is, which is down to earth, humble, working class people,” adding that he never once wanted to be the center of attention despite being exactly that to generations of fans.
A year on, Jones’s story still resonates in a way that goes beyond football statistics, thirty-plus years of loyalty to one small club, a European Cup winner’s medal earned the hard way, and a fist pump that fans still imitate at matches to this day.