Based on an interview with his son Ken, Jack is featured in Cyril Gosling's Grecian Voices published in 2000. Starting from Churchinford in the Blackdown Hills near Taunton, Jack cycled twenty-five miles to watch City's first Southern League home game against Bristol Rovers in September 1908. Later serving in the Great War, he was a fishmonger in Axminster and retained an interest in Exeter City throughout his life. Ken recounts how they both watched the sixth-round FA Cup replay against Sunderland in 1931 and much later attended a game together on Jack's centenary.

Jack's willingness to travel such a distance helps explain how, for the sporting enthusiast, the arrival of professional football in Exeter was an event of significance. Although the Football League - originally solely consisting of clubs from the midlands and the north - dated from 1888, the only teams in the South West operating as full-time ventures had been Bristol City (Southern League from 1897, Football League from 1901), Bristol Rovers (Southern League from 1899) and Plymouth Argyle (Southern League from 1903). For the likes of Jack this probably would have been the first opportunity to experience the country's most popular spectator sport close at hand.

Jack is also an early example of how Exeter City has always drawn support from a wide arc of dozens of towns and villages in Devon and parts of Somerset and Dorset. Rather than being a club for city residents alone, it was soon drawing attention from both city and country much to the delight of the new Exeter City AFC Ltd's business-minded promoters.