It is hard not to smile as Jodi Jones recounts the night before he fired Notts County to Wembley in the final seconds of extra time, a timely moment to score his first goal for the club. “I kept practising my penalty in the front room with my son’s little soft ball,” he says. “I was driving my missus crazy. She was saying: ‘Can you stop now? Because it’s actually making me nervous.’ I was saying to her: ‘And it’s Jones, he takes Notts to Wembley!’ I visualise everything. I try to picture it and take into existence. If you don’t believe, you’re not going to achieve.”
Although his decisive strike did not arrive from the penalty spot, the real-life scenario was nothing short of intoxicating drama. At half-time County, edged out of the sole automatic promotion place by Wrexham after an absorbing season-long title race, trailed 2-0 at home to Boreham Wood in their playoff semi-final. Jones entered with County trailing 2-1 and assisted a 96th-minute equaliser for Aden Baldwin to force extra time. Then, with penalties looming, Jones darted inside the box and arrowed in an extraordinary winner.
The clip of his goal has 1.2m views and counting on social media before County take on Chesterfield in the National League playoff final on Saturday. “I’ve watched it over 50 times and so has everybody in my family, and probably the fans as well,” the winger says on a quiet afternoon at Meadow Lane. “I remember trying to pull my shirt off; I was just so excited I didn’t know what to do. I saw all the bench coming towards me, the gaffer trying to chase me but he couldn’t keep up.” Plans for his partner Zoe’s birthday that evening were kiboshed. “When I got home I just sat there and watched the whole game back. I was just so buzzing.”
Few players could be more deserving of such joy. Jones sustained three anterior cruciate ligament injuries in just over three years at Coventry and the road to this point has been hugely challenging. It was mental torment, a burgeoning career perennially on pause. He did not start a league match between November 2017 and February 2023, almost entirely because of injury. “It wasn’t like it was only rubbish for a few days. It was constant. It was out for nine to 10 months, back for two months, nine to 10 months out, back for a few months, and then another nine to 10 months out. It was horrible every single day.”
James Maddison, a former Coventry teammate, and Callum Wilson, a former Coventry striker, reached out. Maddison sent a signed Leicester shirt with best wishes – and one from Jamie Vardy – and Wilson, who has had two serious knee injuries, messaged with advice. Jones’s third knee injury, sustained the day before Coventry’s first game of the 2020-21 season, hit the hardest. At first, before the scan cemented his worst fears, his mind played tricks. “I was running around my house saying to myself: ‘You’re going to be fine.’ I was squatting, jumping. As soon as my agent told me, all of sudden I couldn’t even walk.” Reality set in. “‘What am I going to do now? I’m in big trouble here.’ I never thought about giving up but I did start saying things to family like: ‘I like sports, I could do some coaching. Maybe I could be a PE teacher?’” The anxiety around whether he would play again, let alone professionally, affected not just Jones but his family. He rewinds to a conversation with his mother, Frances, in the car park of a Sainsbury’s in Coventry. “We got out the car and I saw a cigarette box in my mum’s bag. I was like: ‘What’s going on here? You’ve not smoked for about seven or eight years.’ I used to beg her to stop. ‘Please stop, please stop.’ I used to say, ‘If you don’t stop, I’ll stop playing football’ to get her to stop. She said: ‘Sorry, but I’ve been so stressed because of what’s happened to you.’”
Jones grew up on a council estate in Bow, east London, amid crime, gangs and violence. He played for Senrab, the youth club for whom John Terry and Jermain Defoe also played. “It was a Sunday League team that was way too good for Sunday League – just like Notts County, way too good for the National League,” he says, laughing. Then came spells at Arsenal, West Ham and Dagenham & Redbridge, for whom he made his debut in League Two, aged 17. “I’d play 90 minutes on a Saturday and then Sunday morning I’d be in the cages.”
The 25-year-old joined County on loan from Oxford in January amid league interest. “It’s the best thing I think I’ve ever done, coming here. A lot of people said to me: ‘National League? What if you don’t do well, where are you going to go from there?’ I said: ‘Whatever; you think what you want to think. I’m going to do well, get my name back out there and see what happens.’” The standard, he admits, was a pleasant surprise. “We did a keep-ball drill in training. My team gave the ball away and I remember thinking: ‘Bloody hell, we’ve not got the ball back for five minutes.’”
He remembers the Wembley noise from a 74,434 crowd as part of the Coventry team that beat Oxford in the Football League Trophy in 2017 and the heartbreak of being injured when Coventry won promotion to League One the following year. This time he has requested 66 tickets for family and friends, including his son, Giorgio. Will Jones have any rituals on the day? He always has a warm bath to relax and carries a small photo of himself in his washbag. “I leave it on the side to show myself where I came from and to show myself that little kid had a dream, and to never take anything for granted.”
There is another occasion the Jones clan have marked in the calendar. He is set to be in the Malta team that host England in a Euro 2024 qualifier in June. The reverse fixture is at Wembley in November. Maddison could feature. “My little brothers love the England players like Bukayo Saka so I’ve already said to James: ‘If you get called up, make sure you sort me out with some shirts.’” Jones, whose father, Jay, is Maltese, made his international debut last September and his most recent cap came against Italy in March, after which he got Marco Verratti’s shirt. “I went to walk off and he went: ‘Hey!’ I said: ‘Come on, let’s be honest, you don’t want that.’”
Two days later he was on the bench at Altrincham, where Macaulay Langstaff struck his 40th goal of the season, a club record, to help County go top. They finished with 107 points, four shy of Wrexham, and 117 goals, one more than Wrexham, whose Hollywood owners, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, are set to be among those rooting for County – the oldest professional club in the country – at Wembley. “I know we deserve it, and a lot of people know that as well,” Jones says. “When I came on [against Boreham Wood] without wanting to sound big-headed, I was saying to myself: ‘There is no way I’m letting us lose this game. It just can’t happen. We’ve been way too good this season.’”
