Mansfield Town vs Swindon Town

THE GOLDEN
‘HIS STORY’
ARCHIVE
PROJECTING A PARADE OF GLORIOUS DAYS FROM
THE WORLD’S OLDEST PROFESSIONAL GROUND
From the sublime to the ridiculous
and everything in between, we look
back with a Stags’ hero of the past,
focusing on memorable behindthe-scenes
moments they will never
forget.
Continuing the season with
‘His-Story’, is former box-to-box
midfielder Darrell Clarke. A local
lad from Ladybrook, Darrell first
caught the attention of the club and
joined the Centre of Excellence as a
10-year-old. He signed professional
terms in 1995 and scored on his full
home debut.
Darrell went on to make 173 league
and cup appearances for Mansfield,
scoring 25 goals.
used to go and watch
“I Mansfield as a fan, from a
young age, as my Grandad was a
steward at the club. We’d go and
sit on the old wooden seats in the
Quarry Lane end, singing all the
songs – especially Mansfield Magic!
I have a lot of good memories from
my time at the club – especially as
I then went on to play for Mansfield
until I was 23.
As a member of the Centre of
Excellence – as the youth team set up
was then called - we used to have to
do some extremely menial jobs. The
groundsman at the time, would cut
the grass on the main pitch, and he’d
make us shovel it all up and take it
out onto the training pitch, and tip it
all down the side of the banking!
It was hard graft at the time! I recall
our former youth team manager,
Keith Alexander - he used to put on a
pair of white gloves whenever we’d
tidied up and cleaned a room. He’d
then run his finger along the top of
the door to test that we’d left no dust.
We’d more often than not have to
clean the room again!
We used to have to clean the toilets,
etc, but we always had a good laugh
whatever we were doing. We used to
play a game in the changing rooms
– we’d do kick-ups between us and
whoever ended up dropping the ball
onto the floor was punished by taking
the ball, in a towel, in the back of
the head! We wouldn’t be able to get
away with doing such things these
days!
As a professional there were many
good memories too. I remember once
doing a goal celebration with Lee
Peacock. It was the day of the Grand
National, and we’d said beforehand
if either of us scored I’d get on all
fours, and he’d get behind me as
though he was the jockey and whip
me as though I was a horse. It didn’t
turn out that well – I’m sure you can
imagine what this looked like!
The video footage of this made its
way onto Soccer AM at the time!”
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