The United Family: Remembering our Jim

Where do I start?

First of all, I know he’d be so proud that he’s even remembered at United. He’d be so proud that I’m writing this piece and that United fans will be reading it. He’d be taking the mickey out of me already, though, in that nice way that he had about him.

With his Redditch accent, he'd say: Come on Mom, get on with it!

So, here goes. It’s been 20 years since Jim passed away and I’ve absolutely no idea where the time has gone. I think about him every single day. If you ever met Jim, you were drawn to him. He touched a lot of people’s lives in the 21 years he was with us. He was bubbly, cheeky, funny, a bit of a Jack-the-lad, but also a kind, thoughtful boy who absolutely loved his family and friends. He’d do anything for anyone, but especially for the people he loved.

From the age he was seven or eight, when he started playing in the street every night, football became a huge part of our lives. Roger, his dad, played Sunday League, so there was a bit of it in the blood, but Jim played it constantly and got really good. As he grew up, every team he played for, they always won everything. You’d have other teams targeting him because he was so good. I remember one woman bellowing to her two sons: “Have his legs!” But he used to run rings around them all. He scored once from nearly the halfway line at maybe 12 or 13 and everyone watching just went ballistic.

It wasn’t just football. All his young life, he’d win everything at sports day. I think he still holds the record at Arrow Vale High School for 200 metres. He ran for the county, ran for Birmingham too at 200 metres. If I wanted to catch him and give him a clip for being too cheeky, I could never manage it because he was too quick! But, for all his success, he was never bolshy or arrogant about it at all. He was just Jim.

It was always football that he loved the most. He'd already spent a bit of time with Birmingham and the Villa when he was spotted by Kelvin Hardman for United, then Geoff Watson came to have a look at him. Jim was a Villa fan and, when he went to their training ground, Peter Withe – a real club legend – had told him that he had to sign for them, but Jim was never going to turn down the chance to join United!

I remember crying all the way home down the M6 after we’d dropped him off for the first time in Manchester, but we’d just go up every weekend to see him. We’re still in touch with Philomena, his landlady in Salford. She took him under her wing and really looked after him, but it was hard for him, leaving home at 16. It was hard for all of us. Actually, maybe it wasn’t so hard for his sister, Kate – I’d moan at her all week to tidy up, but then when Jim came home he’d have everything ironed and ready for him. Red-carpet treatment because I hadn’t seen him all week. I’d do anything he wanted. Kate called him Golden Boy.

If we couldn’t get to his games, I’d watch them live on MUTV or some of the family would go to the local golf club. We paid for them to subscribe to MUTV so we could all see him play for the Reserves or the Academy. When he won an award that the viewers voted for, he said in his interview: “I bet my mom was on redial for ages!” That trophy’s still in his bedroom, with his boots.

He used to clean Teddy Sheringham’s boots when he was in the Academy and he came home one Christmas with a £50 note that Teddy had given him as a tip. He was so made up with that. “Look at this,” he kept grinning as he showed everyone.

It meant everything to Jim to be a United player. He would always say it was a proper family unit there and he loved being a part of that, so he was just buzzing when he signed his first professional contract. Negotiations were fun, because Jim went in with an agent who had just approached him, but Sir Alex quickly sent him packing and he, Roger and I ended up just chatting amongst ourselves. I let Roger do the talking because I was scared stiff! Sir Alex was just a proper businessman, he took charge and as soon as everything was agreed and everyone was happy, he switched to being such a nice, pleasant guy.

Jim had so much respect for Sir Alex – though he did once make the mistake of calling him Fergie. That was just his way, everyone got their name shortened or changed, but the glare he got quickly made sure that it was only ever the manager’s full name after that.

There was so much competition for places that, as with a lot of the lads, Jim was earmarked for loan deals to keep his game developing. He was always fully committed to his loan clubs, but he didn’t like being away from home. When he went to Antwerp with Sheasy in 2001, I think his phone bill to his girlfriend back home was about £400! I went over to Belgium to see Jim and I took his younger brother Ryan, because I think he was struggling without family members to pop over and see. Any opportunity he could get to come home, he would. 

After Antwerp, he came back to United and the following season he made his first-team debut against Arsenal at Highbury in the Worthington Cup. Now, Jim was completely committed to his football. He’d take two weeks to go and holiday with his mates every summer, which he’d make sure he enjoyed, but then he was straight back on it, pushing himself to be as fit as he could. He was always in the gym, running or boxing. He’d run a long way to a spot in Redditch, run round that 10 times and then run home. He was so fit, so determined and focused on succeeding. He was very laid-back in other ways, though. His timekeeping sometimes got him into trouble. His car boot was carnage, just paper everywhere. Before he’d signed pro and he was being schooled while at United, Dave Bushell, the club’s education officer, phoned me up and asked me to have a word with Jim, to see if he could start bringing a pen to class.

A similar thing happened at Highbury.

We went round the front of the stadium so we could see them getting off the coach, because I was his biggest fan. Wherever I went to see him, whatever ground we were at, he’d always come up and give me a kiss. None of the other lads did any of that, but he’d always come over. “Come on Mom, give us a kiss,” and I used to think that was lovely because it wasn’t the done thing in football.

So as he’s getting off the coach at Highbury, he comes over, gives me a cuddle and whispers: “Mom, I’ve forgotten my boots.”

“You what?”

“I’m going to borrow some of Webber’s.”

Having a laid-back quality can sometimes help you as a footballer, because there’s so much pressure on you to do everything just right when you get on the pitch. But come on, no boots. What was he like?

Still, I was so proud of him making his debut. People could be affected by getting to that level of football, but he never changed a bit. He never got big-headed – if anything it was me! He made me so proud. I loved telling people that our Jim played for United, but it didn’t affect him in any way at all.

Not too long after that he went on another loan to Swindon and they loved him down there. He loved it too. We’d go most weekends to watch him play home games. At the final game of his loan, the fans were singing: “There’s only one Jimmy Davis,” and he had tears in his eyes. He took his boots off and gave them to a young lad in the crowd and there was a lot of love for him. He got on with everybody. As we were about to leave the stadium, they played the song ‘Jimmy Mack, when are you coming back?’ 

He'd have loved to go back to Swindon for a second season in 2003/04, but he was also really excited when United agreed that he could go to Watford for the season, partly because Danny Webber was already there and they’d been close mates for years. As well as playing football together every day, they’d go and play golf together or go to the cinema or go out if it was close season. The girls loved those two.

Jim was only at Watford for a short time but he really enjoyed everything that went on there. He loved his initiation, where he had to learn and perform Gangsta’s Paradise in front of the whole squad. He approached that in his usual fashion: he worked really hard to get it right but he had a lot of fun with it. He loved everything about Watford and he was really excited to get started there. He picked up a little injury in a pre-season game, which annoyed him, but he couldn’t wait to be fit again so he could get going and show everyone what he could do. Back at United, the squad at that time was so hard to get into, with so much competition in every position, that realistically we’ve no idea what Jim’s next step would have been in his career after Watford.

The tragedy is that we’ll never know.

On 8 August, 2003, Jimmy was at his hotel in Watford the night before the first game of the season. He knew he wouldn’t be playing, so he decided to come home to Redditch for the night with the plan of getting up early and heading back to Vicarage Road so he could have some physio and be at the game. He was due to drive back early with his mate Tim. So he came back, he and Tim went out into town and he got a taxi home in the early hours.

I heard him come in. I was only half-asleep because, when you’ve got kids, you’re never really asleep when they’re out, are you? Jim would often clamber onto Ry’s bed and give him a cuddle while he was asleep, so I heard him do that and I went to sleep.

When I got up the next morning, Jim’s shoes were in the hall, which struck me as strange. They were the shoes he was supposed to be wearing to the game. So I tried phoning him. No answer. I kept trying him but couldn’t get in touch.

Then, later that morning, when the news was announced that the Watford game was cancelled, I knew something was wrong. I phoned the police station in Watford and they couldn’t tell me anything. I just kept saying to them that I had an awful feeling because I couldn’t get in touch with Jim.

Not long afterwards, the police turned up at our door and that was it. The awful news. Jimmy had set off for Watford in the early hours, crashed his car and died.

I just lost it. I couldn’t cope. I couldn’t process what it meant.

Our Jim was gone.

You wouldn’t wish that feeling on your worst enemy, let me tell you. It’s always so sad and horrendous to lose anybody you love, but the way we lost Jim and the impact it had on those of us who were left behind… it was just heartbreaking.

Because of the circumstances, because he had alcohol in his system, some journalists wrote some really crappy things about Jimmy at the start. I could have punched some of them for what they wrote. Jim would go and have a bevvy with the lads at the right time, but that was it. That was one of the hardest aspects of the whole thing, for me. As far as we’re concerned and as far as any of us can tell, Jim made one mistake and paid for it with his life. It just wasn’t him. I didn’t get it then and I still don’t get it. None of us do. We’ll never, ever understand.

Aside from those few journalists, the reaction we got from people was absolutely lovely. The house was full of flowers, the garden was full of flowers. The cards, I’ve never, ever seen anything like it. Hundreds of them. I didn’t open them for a while but everybody was so lovely.

Sir Alex came to the house with Les Kershaw to pay his respects. My mom reacted like Frank Sinatra had walked in – he must have been offered 10 cups of tea while he was here – and United brought the entire first-team squad to the funeral. David Beckham had just left for Real Madrid, but he came back specially. Honestly, if you’d met Jim, he touched your heart.

The funeral was chaotic. People everywhere. You couldn’t get anybody close. I vaguely remember there being lots of people on the grass verges on the way in. On the traffic islands on the way in, there were lots of United supporters. There were hundreds of people outside the venue. Inside there were the players from United, Watford and Swindon, his family and closest friends. Everybody else was outside. They put speakers outside so that people could hear what was happening inside.

We were all brightly dressed. There was no way our Jim would have wanted us all turning up in black. A lot of people wore football shirts. Kate wore a pink suit, I was in pale blue. We all tried to make it as colourful as we could.

My brother, Michael – who had driven past the scene of the accident shortly after it happened without knowing it was Jimmy’s car – read a passage from the Bible which, for years, he had always said was Jim’s verse: Isaiah 40:29-31.

It goes: “He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”

Young men stumble and fall. I’ve got that passage on the kitchen wall.

Jim’s friend Tim spoke about him as a footballer and a mate. His girlfriend Melissa wrote something about how she found being in a relationship with him. And Kate, she was so brave. She wrote a tribute to her brother. It wasn’t a full eulogy because it was too hard to do that for somebody dying that young; where do you start when there isn’t an end? She just wrote about what he did as a brother and how grateful she was to have had him.

I loved their relationship. Jim and Kate both loved their music and dancing. Garage, R&B, they were mad for it. Back then he always had the latest CDs and he and Kate would nick them off each other. He’d be halfway home, pull over and ring Kate and yell: “Have you had that CD out of the case?” One time Kate had just bought a Wayne Wonder CD and noticed it was missing on the same day Jim had gone back to Manchester. She rang him up. He answered but didn’t speak; he just played the song really loud down the phone because he knew what she was calling about. We played that song at his funeral. Kate put a load of empty CD sleeves in his coffin with him because that was their little joke with one another.

The way everything was handled was fantastic. On the day, with such great turnouts from United, Swindon and Watford, it was so respectful. Sir Alex and Jim’s other managers, Andy King from Swindon and Ray Lewington from Watford, were all so lovely. We couldn’t ask for any more from anyone.

But then, what do you do next? Where do you go from there?

It made me really poorly for a while. I spent three months in hospital with a bad breakdown. I never thought I’d recover. Kate had been due to move out but she stayed an extra year to look after us all: me, Ryan and Paul, my husband. Our lifestyle completely changed. From going to the football every weekend, we ended up starting caravanning again, just to be somewhere else. I just couldn’t bear being in the house.

Ryan was only 10 and that was so hard for him. A month later we had to have the family dog, Bonnie, put down. Ryan was inconsolable. Jimmy would have been so upset to see how it affected everyone afterwards. Not everybody believes in the same things, but I know in my heart that Jimmy was around this house after he’d passed, and it wasn’t just me who felt it. Paul was the same, so were others. Roger felt it too.

I couldn’t watch football for years. But, after the FA Cup final at the end of that season, when United played Millwall, the phone rang. 

It was Kate. She just said: “You’ve got to put the telly on now!” 

So I put it on and there were all the United players lifting the trophy, every single one of them wearing our Jim’s shirt.

Davis 36.

I just broke down. It was so lovely, so nice of them. I think Roy Keane organised it and what a lovely gesture. To this day, I’m so thankful that the club did it. It just broke me, though, at the time. Honestly, I’ve cried that much, there could be a river flowing through this house. 

Again, I can hear Jim: Come on Mom, lighten the mood!

Ok then. The last 20 years have been hard but I’m in a fantastic place now in comparison to where I was. You’ve got to hold on to the nice memories. You’ve got to hold it together, and we do, for the most part. I think about Jim every day. Every single day. But I’m able to smile about him now. 

I’m able to remember our Jim, the gentleman who apologised for swearing during a game at The Cliff; the football addict who would come back from training and go play in the street with his little brother and his mates; the doting older brother who would get David Beckham to sign everything he could because Kate was obsessed; the kind boy who got Predators for the nine-year-old on our road; the Jack-the-lad who went on holiday with his mates to Ayia Napa under strict instructions to do nothing stupid, then proceeded to ride scooters and jump off cliffs into the sea; the joker who always made everybody laugh; the competitor who never let Ryan win on the PlayStation despite being 12 years older than him; the sentimental soul who worried that girls only wanted to be around him because he was a footballer; the easy-going kid who could talk to anybody.

It’s still just as upsetting, but you learn to live with it. They say time’s a healer, but it doesn’t heal as much as you just adapt. You’ll never get away from it, and I wouldn’t want to. Why would I ever want to forget our Jim? He was so special.

Being his biggest fan, I’ve got so many videos of him. Proper, old VHS cassettes of every game he played on MUTV, camcorder footage of his lads’ holiday in Ayia Napa when he was making everyone laugh and I’ve even got the video of his initiation at Watford. Ray Lewington gave that to me, our Jim rapping Gangsta’s Paradise. Kate and Ry have watched some of them, but I don’t think I’m there yet. I’ve kept a VHS player and I keep telling myself: I’ll watch a video, I’ll watch a video. I need to sort out getting them digitised, but I keep putting it off. Sometimes I might randomly catch a glimpse of him in an old game, but it’s really hard to watch. I like watching Danny Webber on MUTV because he reminds me of Jim, but watching old videos and having Jimmy temporarily back in the room with you can be upsetting, so I maybe avoid it. 

On the whole, we’re in a far better place as a family than we were back then. It’s been exceptionally hard, but we’re all very proud of each other and how we’ve coped. I couldn’t have gotten through it without my family and Paul. He’s amazing. Unbelievable. He was everybody’s rock throughout the whole process. Jimmy loved him and he’d have been so proud of how Paul kept everyone afloat after he’d gone. And he’d have been so chuffed that his girlfriend, Melissa, was chief bridesmaid at Kate’s wedding, and that Ryan is 30 and getting married this year.

I met another woman, Sue, who lost her son in a car accident when he was 21, the same age as Jim. We’ve stayed in touch and we go out for lunch. We’re not all doom and gloom but we’ve got that connection. It has such a devastating effect on your life, but you can help each other through and, in comparison with where I was 20 years ago, I’m in an amazing place now. 

Kate’s daughters being born was a big turning point for me. I took years off work and looked after them both. Now they’re so grown up, so I go to work, spend time with my family and look after my dogs. I just count my blessings every day. I’ve got Kate, Ry, Sammy, Paul, my granddaughters, my mom, and you have to count your blessings in life.

I’ve also started going to Old Trafford again.

It was maybe 15 years before I could even start watching football after Jimmy had passed, but in 2020, Kate was at a charity dinner and she bid on an auction item for me: tickets to United v Watford at Old Trafford. She wasn’t sure if I’d go or not, but with it being those teams she felt she had to get them. I went with our Ry and once I was back in there, that was it for me. I wanted to go back all the time. I’ve been back quite a lot with Ry and his partner, and I do find that I get all emotional every time I’m outside Old Trafford but once I’m inside, I’m fine.

I never dreamt I’d get back up to Old Trafford, but as soon as you get there, the atmosphere’s electric. I absolutely love it. I’m not all morbid and miserable when I’m there. I love it. Chanting along in the Stretford End, my accent probably standing out a mile. I just love going because United have been such a big part of our lives. I just wish I lived closer because the club gets in your blood.

I also make sure Jim’s there with us.

I couldn’t go in his room for years after he passed – nearly a decade – and once I did, I couldn’t bear to part with anything in there, so I’ve still got all his United things. He had a little red devil toy which I stick in my pocket at the match, when it’s cold I wear a United scarf that a fan gave to him and, of course, I always wear his 36 shirt. I gave some of his shirts to his mates just after he passed, but I made sure I kept some myself and I always have one on when I go to Old Trafford.

Jimmy’s always there with me. He’s got to be with me. Don’t get me wrong, I love United and I love football, but it’s always been about Jim, for me. 

He'd be laughing now: God’s sake, Mom, behave!

I talk about him often, I miss him every day. I always ask myself: where would he be now and what would he be doing?

All I know is that he’d have four kids, probably more, and I think because he had a nice personality and he was a clever lad that he’d have done well for himself after football. He wanted kids so much. Because there was 12 years between Jim and Ryan and then Roger’s son Sammy, he was always really good with his younger brothers – maybe too good. One time, I went mad at him for telling Ry about the birds and the bees.

“What did you tell him that for, Jim?” 

“He needs to know!”

“Needs to know? He’s only eight!”

I can laugh now but I went mad at him at the time. But that’s just life, isn’t it? Everybody goes through life making mistakes here, there and everywhere. That day 20 years ago, Jimmy made a big mistake and he didn’t deserve what happened as a result. It was such a waste of a young life, so devastating for us all.

But, as I say, you’ve got to count your blessings and Jimmy was a blessing who was lent to us for a little while. He was just the best blessing ever. It’s so sad that he had to go, but he brought us so much joy while he was here. 

We’ll always love him and we’ll always miss him.

Jimmy Davis. Our Jim.