There is unlikely to be a dry eye come the eighth minute at Wembley on Saturday. Mansfield Town have invited their supporters to applaud their former No 8 Darrell Clarke, who spent more than a decade at the club but will be in the opposing technical area managing Port Vale in the League Two playoff final, after he experienced a close family bereavement this year. “It is very, very touching and a massive thank you for that, and a massive thank you for the love and respect everybody has given me during what has been a tough time for myself and my family,” Clarke says. “You have to pick yourself up. I want to make the rest of my family proud and continue to do a job I love.”
Vale players more than once warmed up in T-shirts bearing the words ‘Thinking Of You Gaffer’ from February and Clarke has thanked the League Managers Association and Professional Footballers’ Association for their support after taking six weeks’ compassionate leave before a phased comeback, which culminated in a return to the dugout for the final game of the regular season at Exeter, where Vale earned their first win in four games and a playoff place. “I came back because I felt I was ready,” Clarke says. “I was bedding myself in slowly. There were a lot of dark days and there will be in the future but I felt ready to be able to lead my staff and my players.”
Clarke’s assistant, Andy Crosby, led the team in his absence, supported by the coach Dean Whitehead and the rest of the first-team staff. After victory at Hartlepool last month, Clarke, who watched from the stands, went on the pitch and repeatedly pointed to Crosby before the away fans sang Crosby’s name. “Andy was picking the team and doing everything and did an outstanding job. They’re my staff, they’re my players but the work that Andy and the team did while I was away gave me that time to recover – I’ll never fully recover – but gave me that time to be able to be strong enough to return.”
Clarke, whose five-year contract extension was announced on Thursday, is particularly grateful for the support from the Vale owners, Carol and Kevin Shanahan, who have revitalised the club since completing a takeover three years ago. “You know management is a pressured job but when you’re working for good people you want to do it more so for them than yourself. Carol comes to the away games, on overnight stays, and she has a close bond with the players. At a lot of football clubs you don’t get to see the owners – or it is only the managers that do. Carol and Kevin have that personal touch that makes it a special place.”
Clarke grew up on a Mansfield council estate and he and his elder brother, Wayne, who still lives in the town, would go to matches at Field Mill with his grandfather, Dave, who worked as a turnstiles steward. He lived his dream, playing more than 150 games for the club after joining aged 10. Another slice of history that Clarke has with Mansfield provides an unwanted memory. Mansfield forgot their kit when visiting Clarke’s Bristol Rovers on the final day of the League Two season in 2014, borrowed Rovers’ away kit, won 1-0 and relegated Rovers. Clarke restored the club to the Football League at the first attempt, via a penalty shootout playoff final win at Wembley. Now, again, 11 months of hard work boil down to one game.
The links between the clubs do not stop with Clarke, with Mal Benning, Aidan Stone and Harry Charsley joining Vale from Mansfield in the past 12 months, while Vale’s director of football, David Flitcroft, spent the 2018-19 season in charge of Mansfield, who are now managed by Nigel Clough. “Fate has a strange hand of delivering some things, doesn’t it?” says Clarke who together with Flitcroft overhauled the squad last summer. All 15 out-of-contract players were released and three others were put up for sale but the homegrown pair James Gibbons, who joined aged 11 and recalls bucket collecting outside Vale Park when the club went into administration in 2012, and Nathan Smith, who recently celebrated 300 games for the club, remain key pillars of the team.
As Clarke heads downstairs to resume preparations, Carol and Kevin are heading in the opposite direction, towards the boardroom for local radio interviews. Clarke and Carol ask after each other before sharing a hug. “Every home game, one of the lads’ families are invited into the boardroom to have a really nice meal and to watch the game from there, which is probably unheard of in the footballing world,” Clarke says. “The players love her to bits because she genuinely cares. To Carol, they’re not just footballers, they’re people and that’s how she runs the football club. It is how she wants to run the club and it is how she wants me to manage. I think that’s why we’re a perfect fit.”
On Friday Vale’s players will spend half an hour surveying the scene at Wembley, 24 hours before sampling the real thing. “I think it’s a good idea to get all the photos out of the way because I don’t want to see phones and people taking pictures on matchday,” Clarke says. He knows he is going to be awash with emotion on Saturday but insists he must temper that if Vale are to prevail. “You put your mask on,” he says. “I’ve got a job to do, I’ve got to perform, which I’ll do. There will probably be a lot of emotion after the game but I’m a football manager and I want to be leading the troops, and you cannot do that if you’ve got too much emotion. I’ll be professional in my mindset to try and get us into League One.”