Profile

William Boyd ‘Billy’ Jardine was a tall and energetic forward from Jedburgh in Scotland. He was also a useful goal-kicker and played one county game for his adopted Lancashire and figured in the trial games prior to the 1910 tour to Australia and New Zealand. He enjoyed a distinguished career with Oldham. after joining the club for the 1908-09 season, carrying on from his brother Adam who had played for the Roughyeds from 1903, only to finish his Oldham career as Billy arrived at Watersheddings.
A regular member of the first team right up to the 1914-15 season Billy played 164 senior matches for Oldham scoring 26 tries and kicking 60 goals in the process. He played against the first Kangaroos at Watersheddings on Boxing Day 1908, scored a try in the 1909 Championship Final defeat to Wigan (3 – 7) and was a member of the team that won the Lancashire Cup in 1910 against Swinton (4 – 3).

He joined the Manchester Regiment with many of his team-mates in September 1914. Having reached the rank of corporal, he was discharged from the army towards the end of 1915 after being diagnosed with tuberculosis of the throat. He returned to Scotland and spent 12 months at the Anderson sanatorium in Hawick which specialised in the treatment of ‘TB’. After initial reports that he was improving the news of his death on January 16th 1917 came as a shock to his many friends in Oldham.
He was 31 when he died and is remembered on the Jedburgh War Memorial in Scotland.