Jimmy Boyland: Veteran football stalwart still going strong

Jimmy Boyland, 68, has run his Friday night football sessions for more than 40 years and is the chairman of Port Glasgow Boys' Club.

His contribution was celebrated when he was invited to Hampden to receive an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Scottish Football Association.

But the proud grandfather says his best reward is simply seeing 'a smile on the weans' faces'.

Jimmy said: "I was always good at football and just wanted to give something back. I will keep going in the game as long as I am able to."

Busy Jimmy has accomplished a lot during his life, including rising through the ranks in the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders.

He was a popular leader at Port Glasgow High School's youth club before serving as janitor there for 25 years.

Jimmy, who is chair and treasurer of the Greenock Argylls, is from a family of eight and was brought up in Park Farm until he was 13, when his family moved to Pentland Avenue.

He attended Boglestone Primary and Port High and like many people of his generation left school on the Friday and got a job on the Monday, at the Co-op in Brightside Avenue as a store boy. While on a delivery he spotted a poster that would change his life.

Jimmy, of Campsie Avenue, said: "I saw an advert for the Army and signed up at 17. I was in the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders for six years, based at Kirknewton, Osnabruck in Germany and Northern Ireland. I spent my 21st in Belfast."

Jimmy, who'd got engaged at the time, left the Army after six years planning to get married, but this fell through, and back on civvy street he got involved in another passion - youth work.

He said: "I should have stayed in the army but I didn't - I thought I was doing the right thing at the time.  I was the top soldier in the regiment and a full corporal when I was only 19."

While he was back at his old school in the 1980s as a part-time youth worker at night he was also helping with a pensioners' group during the day.

He then became janitor at the school for a long stint, retiring when he was 60. It was at the school where he met his wife Joan, who was a home link worker at Port High.

Jimmy joked: "I told Joan I was looking for someone who was under 30 and had blonde hair, she was 30 at the time, so she told me she was 29!"

Joan proposed in 1990 as it was a leap year and the pair tied the knot in 1991 and have never looked back.

They welcomed their daughter Jenna in 1992 and son James in 1998 and are doting grandparents to Jenna's daughters Amelia, five, and Evie, who is three.

The couple are very much part of the local community and together have a joint council service of more than 70 years.

As well as being chairman of the Port Boys, Jimmy also serves as secretary of Port Glasgow Angling Club.

In recent years he has unfortunately suffered from a number of serious health problems but he has bravely managed to battle through them all. 

In 2018, it was discovered that the pacemaker he had been fitted with wasn't working and he was too old for a transplant. 

Two years ago he was desperately ill with heart disease and then pneumonia caused by Covid, with his wife also in hospital at the same time.

An ex-Port High pupil who is now a nurse realised how ill he was and within hours he was hooked up to a ventilator and put on an anti-viral drip.

Joan, who was in the bed diagonally opposite her husband, said: "The consultant said with Jimmy's age and all these health problems if he didn't go on oxygen, he wouldn't make it."

Jimmy, miraculously survived, and says it was his family which got him there.

He said: "Joan, my kids and my grandkids helped me pull through."