Burnett: James J. (Jimmy)

1908-1910 (Leeds City Player Details)

Inside Forward

Born: Aberdeen: 29-02-1880

Debut: v Barnsley (h): 14-09-1908

5’10” 12st 0lb (1904)

Burnett’s first football team was Victoria United in his native Aberdeen, who he joined in August 1895. There were three clubs in Aberdeen at the time, Aberdeen, Orian and Victoria United and all three played in the Scottish Northern League and they amalgamated to form Aberdeen in 1903. So Burnett became an Aberden player from that time. The Dons then won promotion to the Scottish League, when it was expanded in 1905. In the meantime Burnett had joined Aberdeen from Victoria United in August 1897. He made his debut for the Dons on 4th September 1897 in a 6-1 win over Lochee United in the Northern League. He remained with them until 1903 when he moved to the South Coast of England to join the Southern League's Portsmouth but soon returned north of the border to join Dundee in 1904 having played five games in the Southern League and finding the net four times in 1902-03 season and then made a further ten appearances for five goals in 1903-04. He stayed at Dens Park for one season making just seven appearances, without scoring, before returning to England with Second Division Grimsby Town in May 1905, his first exposure to the English League. He made his Football League debut at Chesterfield that September. He stayed with the Lincolnshire coast side for almost two seasons scoring thirteen goals in fifty-one League games, and a further three F.A. Cup appearances without scoring, netting six in twenty-eight in 1905-06 and seven in twenty-three in 1906-07. He then left for the South Coast, once more in May 1907, where he joined his second Southern League club in Brighton and Hove Albion. It was there that he made first contact with the Manager Frank Scott-Walford. He scored three goals in sixteen appearances in the 1907-08 season. Brighton had great success including several upset victories against Football League opposition, not to mention the beating of Football League Championship-winners Aston Villa in the Charity Shield of 1910 by one goal to nil. When Scott-Walford moved to Leeds he brought several Brighton players with him and Jimmy Burnett was one of the players to join Leeds in May 1908. Burnett struggled to make an impression and played mostly with the Leeds City Reserves, having to be content with playing second fiddle to Jimmy Gemmell and Tom Rodger, as well as strikers Andy Bowman and Billy McLeod, who often operated at Inside Forward. However, he persevered and had found himself a regular spot by the end of the season. It was different in the following season when there was Irish imports Billy Halligan and Tom Mulholland to compete with and, although Bowman and Rodger had left, he was no longer a regular. Leeds City were his final football team and he retired after the 1910-1911 season.