The move was to be just before Connor was called up for a summer international against France in Paris. However, whilst he was clearly some player, it was to be the first of only four caps over the next three years, the last against England, sadly a 3-0 defeat. In part that was due to unfortunate timing. The first part of his playing career overlapped with that of the last part of Alan Morton's at Rangers, thirty-one caps over twelve years to 1932, and much of the rest with that of Dally Duncan at Derby, fourteen over five. It meant he was never able to become as integral a part of the international team as he had at Roker Park, remaining so for seven seasons, all under Cochrane. With him there The Black Cats had begun in mid-table but, before falling back once more, in 1933-34 was sixth, in 1934-5 second and in 1935-36 League Champion. 

However, early 1937 would see Jimmy pick up an injury serious enough to see him miss victory in that years FA Cup Final. And, whilst, still aged just twenty-eight and said to have recovered by the autumn, he then struggled to reclaim his place in the team. Indeed it was to lead in 1939 and at only thirty to a perhaps surprising decision, but in the event one that proved well-timed, to take retirement and return to working at what he had been originally trained, a joiner. By then he had married; in 1937 in Sunderland. His wife was a young, local-girl, Edna Hudson, and the following year they were to have one son. 

And at that they would live their lives out on Wearside. Edna Connor would die there in 1961 at the age of just forty-five. Jimmy would outlive her by almost two decades passing away still in his adopted city in 1980, four weeks before his seventy-first birthday.