Four years on, Jordan Jones opens up about his departure from Rangers and how it still doesn’t sit right with him to this day.

The Northern Ireland international and former Gers defender George Edmundson received a whopping seven game ban in 2020 after breaching strict COVID-19 restrictions after attending a house party, which he believes ultimately led to their departures from the Ibrox club.

In the 2021 January transfer window, both players were sent out on loan with Jones going to Sunderland, and Edmundson going to Derby County, and neither of them kicked a ball for the Light Blues again.

Speaking with the Belfast Telegraph, the winger discussed that infamous night that changed his career forever:

“That night, me and George Edmundson, we got caught with the COVID rules.

“The rule we actually broke was you were allowed six people in the house and we had 10, so the police came and obviously gave out Covid tickets.

“You sort of know the rest. We had to be suspended for two weeks, I had to pull out of the international squad and I missed the Play-Off Final for the Euros. I was fined heavily by the club and it was an absolute disaster.

“We did wrong. I fully accept that, we broke the rules but I remember thinking, ‘Jesus, we’re getting made out to be the worst people on the planet’.

“I get it. It comes with being a Rangers player. Things get completely blown out of proportion. I said to George once it had died down after a week, ‘We’ve got to apologise, we’re in the wrong with the rule we’ve broken’.

“We had four more people in the house than what we should have had, and then it comes out years later that the (UK) Government were doing exactly the same! It’s just like ‘Wow!’ so, anyway, that actually happened.

“When we went into Rangers two weeks later, we apologised and the manager was really good with us. He’d seen the amount of grief we took off the media, fans and everyone in Scotland with everyone speaking about it and he was supportive about that.

“The plan was to play me and George in the next available game so fans knew it had been put to bed and we were moving forward. Then we got pulled into his office as the SFA had hit us with a seven-game ban. We’d already missed games and that took us to January.

“He (Steven Gerrard) said it would be difficult to get back in after pretty much three months out, which I understood, so we trained with the first-team until January and then we were both looking for loan moves.

“My partner was pregnant at the time with our boy, who was due in April. Sunderland came in, which made a lot of sense to me because it was 50 minutes from my home so, with a baby on the way, I went there and really enjoyed being at another huge football club.

“I hit some good form and then I got a little twinge in my hamstring, which kept me out for a couple of weeks. It knocked me off the level that I was at.

“I remember we played Portsmouth away (in March 2021) and it was one of the best games I’ve ever had, to be honest. I got a goal and an assist and I remember thinking, ‘Oh, I’m going again here’, and then at the end of that game, I did my hamstring, so that was frustrating.”

Despite only having a short spell at the Govan club, the 31-year-old looks back at his time with fondness. He added:

“In my second season as a Rangers player, we won the title. I was on loan with Sunderland when the team clinched it.

“I congratulated them on social media and Michael Beale (then the first-team coach at Ibrox) replied, saying, ‘You are a part of this’. The manager (Gerrard) made a point of texting me, thanking me for my efforts for that season and contributing.

“There’s still that part of you that thinks, ‘If we didn’t have 10 people having a drink on that night, it would never have worked like this’. Then there’s a part of me that looks back and I’m immensely proud that I’ve played for a football club like that.