SURVEY THE FOOTAGE and photographs taken in the wake of the 2010 Championship play-off final at Wembley and you’ll struggle to find someone who’s savouring the moment more than Billy Clarke.
A year after being released from Ipswich Town by Roy Keane – one of his boyhood heroes – Clarke was part of a Blackpool squad on its way to the Premier League.
It’s an occasion that stands out among the highlights of a playing career that ended during the summer. The versatile attacker checked out with more than 450 professional games to his credit.
In the aftermath of a retirement, the tone and outcome of a footballer’s self-appraisal is generally determined by whether they focus on how things were, or how they might have been. For now, Clarke resides somewhere in between those two points of view.
He was just 17 when he debuted in the Championship. He played a part in five promotions. He contributed to victories over clubs of the stature of Chelsea, Leicester City and Leeds United. He came up against decorated players like James Milner and Manuel Neuer while representing his country.
Clarke has many reasons to be satisfied with his lot, yet there remains a lingering sense that he was hindered by mistakes made in the embryonic stages of his life as a full-time professional.
“I’m my own biggest critic and I’ve always looked at my performances and my career through a magnifying glass,” says the former Ireland U21 international.
“If I was being picky, I’d say I probably underachieved slightly. Some of that was of my own doing, some of it was picking up injuries at the wrong times, but mainly it was down to myself.”
Clarke spent last season at League Two side Bradford City. It was his third spell with a club who represent a place that he, his wife Kate, and three sons now call home.
Following a campaign that concluded with a disappointing mid-table finish, Bradford revamped their squad and management with a view towards rebuilding for the future.
After assisting with the U15 and U16 sides, Clarke had hoped to be retained in a player-coach role. Nevertheless, the club could find no room for the 33-year-old in their plans.
Despite having to confront the loathsome prospect of free agency as a veteran whose best days had already come and gone, he had offers to continue his playing career elsewhere. What he didn’t have was the appetite to pursue any of them.
“I’m normally quite active during the off-season,” he explains. “I’d have a week of doing nothing but then I’d be straight back into the gym. This time, a week turned into two weeks, three weeks and then I just felt like I really didn’t want to carry on [playing].
“I did have options and I said I’d wait a while before making a decision, because once all the games started again I thought I’d be hungry and desperate again to be involved somewhere. But that just wasn’t the case and the truth is that I don’t miss it at all.”
Over the course of a senior playing career that lasted 16 seasons, Clarke represented 13 clubs. His roving existence as a footballer mirrored a somewhat nomadic upbringing.
Born in Cork, he spent considerable portions of his childhood living in Tanzania and Bahrain due to his father’s job in medical software. The family eventually settled back on Leeside, where Clarke honed his talents with Leeds and Maymount Celtic.
Southampton, Manchester City, Everton, Aston Villa and Leicester City were all interested in bringing him to England, but Clarke opted for Ipswich Town at a time when they weren’t long removed from a Uefa Cup run that featured a home win against Inter Milan.
He was a prominent member of the club’s FA Youth Cup-winning team in 2005, yet on a personal level the accomplishment was somewhat marred by his absence for the final.
Clarke, who played in all of the previous rounds, sustained a knee injury in the semi-finals that restricted him to a spectator’s role while his team-mates overcame a Southampton side that included Theo Walcott, Adam Lallana and David McGoldrick. Another spectator was 15-year-old Gareth Bale, who was among the Saints’ substitutes.
It was the first instance of Clarke being tormented by a knee issue, but unfortunately not the last. Much later in his career, a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament [ACL] in his left knee sabotaged his chances of contributing to Charlton Athletic’s 2019 promotion to the Championship.
However, a source of even greater injury-induced anguish had already surfaced in the summer of 2010, when Blackpool were preparing to tackle the top tier of English football.
Having already missed three months of the promotion-winning campaign with a knee problem, Clarke then tore the ACL in his right knee during a pre-season friendly. It ruled him out for the entirety of Blackpool’s one and only season in the Premier League.
Manager Ian Holloway described it as “the last thing we needed”, while Clarke attempted to remain upbeat despite a “heartbreaking” setback, stating: ”Hopefully Blackpool will stay up and I’ll be able to play in the Premier League another time.”
That ultimately wasn’t to be, as Holloway’s side were back in the Championship by the time he returned to competitive action. Like a marathon runner being disqualified at the finish line, he had put in the work but was denied the glory.
Although it was defined by bitter disappointment, Clarke also remembers his spell with Blackpool as a time of positive change. His transfer from Ipswich, coupled with becoming a father at 21, triggered a much-needed acceleration in his development – both as a footballer and a man.
“Personally I think I should have had a longer career in the Championship. Having said that, over the course of a full career you probably get what you deserve,” says Clarke, who played predominantly in League One after his 2012 departure from Blackpool.
“Between the ages of 17 and 21, it was just my ability that got me through and I took stuff for granted. It wasn’t until I went to Blackpool that I started to look at everything differently and gave it everything I had.
“I became religious with my diet and I completely changed my work ethic and mentality towards football. If I had been like that at 17, I reckon I may have played for longer at a higher level than I did.
“I was just carrying on like a regular lad of 17, 18, or 19. I was living in England on my own and playing football, so in my spare time I used to go out. The regret now is that I didn’t sacrifice that.
“I wouldn’t say I was excessive or that there was a problem; it was just that I might go out on a Saturday night, be out until 3am or 4am, and then I had to be up for training on a Sunday at probably 9am.
“So was I preparing properly for that session? Definitely not, but I wasn’t thinking that way at the time. It wasn’t like I was going out a few nights every week, but I was going out when I shouldn’t have.
“I probably handled things differently as well. When I wasn’t in the team, I might have had a strop on because I thought I should be playing. I was just immature in how I dealt with stuff.
“I look back now to when I was that age and feel I reacted too negatively to not being picked, when the only reaction should have been to maybe try and work even harder.
“Look, it happened, but I’m sure everyone would have done things differently in their life when they were that age. Hindsight is a great thing in that regard.”
The jettisoning of Clarke from Ipswich came on the back of a season during which he submitted a solid claim for a new contract while out on loan. As a young striker who was still cutting his teeth in first-team football, he scored 18 times across the 36 games he played while representing Darlington, Northampton Town and Brentford.
For Brentford, a remarkable journey from League Two to the Premier League was completed earlier this year. They took the first step up that ladder in 2009, when Clarke scored twice in a 3-1 win over Darlington, coincidentally, that sealed their promotion.
He then returned to Portman Road, where Roy Keane had just taken the managerial reins from Jim Magilton. As Keane seized up the personnel he had inherited, neither Clarke’s productive loans, nor his status as a fellow Corkonian, were deemed worthy of a new deal.
“I was out on loan when Roy came in so he possibly just didn’t see enough of me, I don’t know,” he recalls. “He also had Jon Stead and Jordan Rhodes was coming through from the year below me as well, so maybe he didn’t want to block Jordan’s path.
“He obviously spoke to people at the club and made his decision, but I only had good experiences with Roy after that. There were no hard feelings or bitterness from me.
“When I injured my knee afterwards at Blackpool, because my wife is from Ipswich I used to go down there every six weeks or so and use their facilities and their physio. Roy would call me into his office and tell me if there was anything I needed to just give him a shout. He was really good about it.”
While adamant that he was physically capable of continuing to play for another season or two at the very least, the recent nod to begin his full-time coaching career has vindicated Clarke’s decision to begin the next stage of his life sooner rather than later.
After confronting the daunting task of attending his first-ever job interview, he was appointed U18 assistant coach at Championship club Hull City last month.
✍️ Hull City Academy is delighted to announce that former EFL striker @billyclarke7 has joined the coaching staff as the new Assistant Manager for the Under-18s!
— Hull City Academy (@HullCityAcademy) September 20, 2021
➡️ https://t.co/7ReUIciW8n
🐯 #hcafc #hcafcU18 pic.twitter.com/DPEFuABX9q
“There was definitely a bit of worry about how I’d react when I finished playing but, to be honest, it has been brilliant,” he says. “The transition has been fairly smooth and I’m loving it.
“From speaking to people who have been there and done that when it comes to retirement, I know that once the motivation is gone then you’re only delaying the inevitable.
“I’m glad I didn’t [continue playing] because this opportunity at Hull wouldn’t have been there if I did. I’m happy with my decision and the fact that I’ve been able to make it myself, rather than being forced into making it.”
Clarke achieved a childhood dream by making it to the Premier League, only for a rotten stroke of misfortune to rob him of the thrill of experiencing it. That was more than a decade ago, but the wounds inflicted by a blow of such magnitude don’t heal in a hurry.
“The setbacks you get during your career, football doesn’t really give you a chance to grieve them. You have to move on to the next thing – what else can you do?
“The ‘what if…’ kind of thoughts still do come into my head. Like, when the 17-year-olds [at Hull City] ask ‘have you ever played in the Premier League?’, it’s a difficult one because while the answer is ‘no’, it still feels like there’s a ‘but’ as well.
“I don’t mention that because there’s no point. I didn’t play in the Premier League, that’s the fact of the matter, but I do know what it’s like to get there. That was a great experience in its own right and no one can take that away.”
Clarke did come up against some of the best players in the English game in January 2015, when Bradford City travelled to Stamford Bridge and caused a monumental FA Cup upset in a fourth-round clash with Chelsea.
Jose Mourinho’s side ended the campaign as Premier League and Capital One Cup winners, but their chances of a domestic treble were dashed by losing 4-2 (their only defeat in 27 home games that season) to their opponents from League One.
As well as his own shirt, Clarke left London that night with the one worn by Chelsea’s World Cup-winning midfielder Cesc Fabregas as a souvenir. Following the outbreak of Covid-19, he put both jerseys up for grabs in a raffle and raised nearly €8,000 for the NHS Foundation Trust and a Bradford food bank.
As he now diverts his attention to a new role in the game, Clarke can identify valuable lessons that are likely to be of benefit when he casts his mind back to his days as a young professional player.
He says: “What I learned from that period is something that I think will help me now. To reach your potential, you have to be ready to sacrifice more or less everything bar your family.
“I wasn’t doing that back then, but being able to put that judgement on myself will help me to ensure that I won’t let the same thing happen with coaching. Because of my experiences, I know that I won’t allow myself to be in a situation where I end up questioning my own work ethic.
“There’ll be something in that for the players too. Ability will only get you to a certain point. What will take you beyond that is attitude, dedication and the sacrifices you’re prepared to make.”