When it comes to measuring the magnitude of Peter Clarke's career in football a simple fact drives home the sheer longevity of it.
When the Southport-born defender made his Premier League debut for Everton against Coventry City on January 20, 2001, Anthony Gordon - the club's current attacking star, who came from through the same ranks - wasn't even born.
Unsurprisingly, football has been a life-long obsession for Clarke since around the age of four. His dad was heavily involved in grassroots football and had played semi-professionally himself. After training with boys two or three years older than him at Birkdale United, they soon realised that the then six-year-old wasn't going away and his journey through the sport began.
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By the time he was 11, a route into Everton started to emerge. "A scout from Everton came down called Arthur Stephens. He asked me if I'd like to go up to Bellfield for a trial period," Clarke told the ECHO. "This was coming towards the end of the season. I jumped at the opportunity, couldn't wait. There weren't many training sessions left (in the season) but they offered me another 12 months. Obviously I was delighted and from that point on I was involved with the Centre of Excellence and progressed through the age groups."
Clarke would be joined in the age groups either side of him by a host of names who would go on to represent the first team, including Michael Ball, Richard Dunne, Francis Jeffers, Danny Cadamarteri, Phil Jevons, Tony Hibbert and Leon Osman, many of whom would feature in Everton's FA Youth Cup-winning side of 1998.
"I've certainly got a level of bias but I think that not only did Everton produce players for their first team, but also they also gave lads the tools, knowhow and ability to go on and forge careers for themselves, be it at Everton or elsewhere," enthused Clarke. After initially starting on a YTS scheme, then-Blues boss Walter Smith offered Clarke a professional contract on his 16th birthday.
"From being a kid at a young age, it was all I ever wanted to do," continued Clarke. "Signing the first professional contract was the initial realisation of some of those dreams, but then the hard work had to start. I was immensely proud and I think I would say the same for my mum and my dad. Maybe that was a little bit of recognition and thanks for the help they'd given me and the sacrifices that they made when I was younger."
Former Rangers boss Smith handed Clarke his Premier League debut against Coventry at Highfield Road. He would make 10 appearances in all competitions the following season but was then sent out on a string of loan deals with Blackpool, Port Vale and latterly the Sky Blues.
With Smith by now gone and David Moyes in the Goodison hot seat, Clarke turned down a new contract and joined Blackpool on a free transfer. Although it was a wretch to leave his boyhood club, the decision itself was not particularly difficult, he admitted.
He said: "I think at that stage I was 22, I'd played in the first team and had a taste of football in the Premier League and I loved it. I'd had a couple of loan spells and it appeared that the opinion of David Moyes was different to Walter Smith and he pretty much told me that I wasn't going to really figure in his plans. So it got to a stage where I needed to go an play regular first-team football and test myself on a weekly basis.
"That was the reason that I turned down the contract, but because I was under 24 and they had offered me a contract they were able to get a compensation fee for me. For furthering my career it was a relatively easy decision, but it was with an immensely heavy heart that I came to the decision. I wanted to play in Everton's first team and be a one-club player, but life doesn't always work out that way."
Clarke accepts that leaving Everton was the springboard to a long career in football, with Seasiders manager Colin Hendry showing faith in him and selecting him on a regular basis. Clarke was declared Blackpool's player of the year in his first season, helping them to avoid relegation from the Championship. He would also pick up a further three awards in his maiden season.
But when Blackpool were relegated at the end of the 2005-06 season, he made a somewhat surprising move to Southend United, keeping himself in the Championship as a consequence. "They (Southend) had shown some interest. We'd had a couple of tough seasons at Blackpool and I felt like it was an opportunity to go and test myself and better myself in a professional sense," he said.
But the South East club's hopes of edging towards the Premier League did not materialise and instead, they were relegated at the end of Clarke's first season. He would remain a regular starter in the side in League One however, but an attempt to win promotion back to the second tier fell short after suffering a 5-1 playoff semi-final defeat to Doncaster Rovers.
Although Clarke was transfer listed, he stayed at Southend, and that led to one of the most memorable moments in his storied career. When the League One side faced Premier League Chelsea in the FA Cup third round it was he who secured a famous draw with a last-minute header at Stamford Bridge on his birthday.
"I couldn't wait for the game to come around," Clarke remembers. "We knew it was always going to be a tough task and we went a goal behind, but it was only 1-0 and we weathered various storms and we were still in the game. With about five minutes to go I got on the end of a corner and hit the bar. I wondered if that was going to be the last opportunity. There was a break in play and I went for a drink and the kit man at the time said, 'you'll get another opportunity', I thought 'yeah'. We ended up with a long throw. It was thrown into the box and flicked on and I managed to get on the end of it and direct it into the corner. To score the equaliser and celebrate in front of the fans and enjoy the moment was fantastic."
After a second spell with Blackpool, Clarke followed manager Lee Clark to Huddersfield Town. Unbeknown to Clarke, the Terriers boss had tried to sign the centre-back some six months earlier but finally got his man, making him captain straight away. The free-flowing attacking brand of football saw Huddersfield launch multiple promotion attempts and it was third time lucky when they finally achieved their goal in a Wembley play-off final against Sheffield United after the match was settled on a penalty shoot-out.
Clarke said: "We lost a play-off semi-final and then lost a final, both of which hurt, but we made it again. After two hours of football and the score still 0-0, as captain I managed to win the toss and have the kicks in front of our fans. I'm thinking, 'yes, everything's going our way'. Then we missed the first three penalties! I thought maybe this is not going to be our day.
"Fortunately, Sheffield United missed two of their first three penalties as well. I was on the fourth penalty. I knew exactly what I was going to do and where I was going to go with it and tucked it away. Including mine, we then scored eight consecutive penalties and their eleventh taker missed, so we won the game and promotion. It was certainly tense but to come out on the right side of it was fantastic.
"As a kid, playing on the playground or in the yard, on the rec, or wherever you were with your mates, it was always the cup final for me. You wanted to win and it was always at Wembley, so for me to play and captain a team to winning a trophy at Wembley, it was the realisation of a childhood dream."
After a third spell with Blackpool in the Championship, Clarke joined League One side Bury and won the club's player of the season award for the 2015-16 season, but then joined Oldham Athletic, where he won the award again.
He joined Joey Barton's Fleetwood Town in August 2019, but by January Tranmere Rovers and Micky Mellon had come calling. Clarke said: "There was some contact from Tranmere. Myself and Micky met up and had a coffee and spoke for a long time regarding football and everything else as well. There and then I pretty much agreed to sign for him and wanted to get started."
As it turned out, Clarke's debut for Rovers was against then Premier League side Watford in the FA Cup third round. The Hornets would be 3-0 up at half-time, but remarkably Tranmere pulled the tie around after the break and got it back to 3-3, before going on to win a replay at Prenton Park.
"It was certainly an interesting game to have as your debut," recalled Clarke. "At half-time it seemed like the world was about to cave in and things weren't looking too clever. I think they'd had three shots and scored from distance on each occasion. You're wondering how its going to end. The manager made a couple of changes and we turned the game on its head. It ended up 3-3 but if we'd played another 10 minutes I think it's fair to say that we probably would have gone on to win the game."
The Covid-19 pandemic would ultimately ruin Tranmere's season. Rovers had been struggling in League One and sat in the relegation zone but had shown critical signs of improvement with three straight wins. But when the season was ended early, a vote put to member clubs asking them to accept a controversial points-per-game system to determine the final standings was passed and with it the Birkenhead club was demoted back to League Two.
Clarke said: "In a sense it perhaps didn't hit some players in the way that it would had you been relegated after a certain game, but for me it hurt. The manner of it felt unjust. We'd won our previous three games away from home. We had games in hand to teams above us and ultimately we believed we had enough to get ourselves out of the situation we were in. Ultimately, we could have preserved our League One status but were not given the chance to do so."
The drop back to the fourth tier saw Mellon leave Prenton Park for Dundee United. He was replaced by his assistant Mike Jackson, but he himself was sacked three months in, after only winning three of his 13 matches. Clarke felt Jackson was quite hard done by.
He said: "I felt really sorry for Jacko. His first managerial job after the successes that Micky had was always going to be difficult, but he took a job when the levels of fitness of players were at such differing levels with the pandemic. He was picking teams on a Thursday and Friday and then having to change three or four because they had been ruled out with Covid.
"That had a huge baring on the start to the season that his team was able to make and decision came that it was better to relive him if his duties. But I really felt for him at the time."
Jackson was replaced by Keith Hill, who despite taking Tranmere into the play-offs, had an uneasy relationship with the Super White Army, but Clarke had no issue with him. "I got on well with him," he said. "He was a tough manager to please and was demanding of his players. He wanted them to work hard and gave them a framework to play from. I think his win ratio was near 50% for the time that he was there.
"But a couple of injuries towards the end of that campaign didn't help with the push for promotion. We ended up in the play-offs and without doubt were the better better team in the semi-final against Morecambe but it was they who got promoted. I look back and think we could have been."
Tranmere had been on course for automatic promotion that season but poor form towards the end saw them scrape into the play-offs instead and contributed to Hill losing his job after the final game of the regular season. But Clarke denies that there was any unrest in the camp, but perceived disharmony down to frustration of not being able to secure automatic promotion.
Clarke was named in the EFL League Two Team of the Season at the end of the 2020-21 season despite being one of only five players over the age of 40 still participating in English football's professional leagues. But in the summer he turned down a new contract with Tranmere and instead moved to midlands club Walsall.
Despite being a hugely popular figure at Prenton Park, Clarke explained to the ECHO why he decided to leave. He said: "I was offered a contract at Tranmere. It was on significantly reduced terms to what I had been on, which wasn't necessarily the be all and end all. But also, the talk from the director of football (James Vaughan) at the time was that I wasn't likely to play much football. It was more a player-coach role but more coach than player.
"It was something that I wasn't ready for at that time in my career. Did I want to leave Tranmere? No, not at all. But ever since I was a kid all I've wanted to do was play footy. I've realised that I'm not going to do it forever but having not missed a league minute in two campaigns I felt that the offer wasn't the right one for me. I felt capable of playing and contributing to a team and still wanted to. They were the major factors behind the decision I made I suppose."
As things have turned out, Tranmere's director of football Vaughan has already moved onto a new role with Everton, so had Clarke stayed with Rovers had would have outlived his former teammate's short reign.
"You make decisions in football and you never know what's around the corner," he said. "I supposes it's the age old adage, a week's a long time in football. A couple of days can be a long time. Players and managers and owners can come and go from football clubs. The only no-negotiable is that the supporters don't come and go. You support a team through thick and thin."
His last comment is particularly pertinent to Tranmere's supporters, whom he holds in the highest regard. "I can't speak highly enough of the fanbase," he said. "For me personally and the team they always gave us incredible backing home and away and certainly scoring goals in front of the big Kop stand there and celebrating with them, they were thoroughly enjoyable experiences and I love every second of it.
"The fans are very loyal. I think if they see people giving their all for the team I don't think they will complain too much. Hopefully I did that while I was there and they were happy with what I gave to them in my time at the club."
At 40 years of age, Clarke has made 10 appearances for Walsall so far this season. Such an age feels safe to ask about his future and when he will eventually hang his boots up, but his response probably explains why the Everton youth prospect has enjoyed a career that has spanned 23 seasons with almost 900 appearances.
He said: "It's all I've ever wanted to do since I was a kid and I feel very lucky to have done it. Some things have changed for the better of the years, some things not. But if I'd not been adaptable I wouldn't be sat here having this conversation now.
"I think everyone starting out in a career thinks they're going to play forever but I realise that is not going to be the case. I'm not going to put any time limits on how long I'm going to play for. I still love being out there competing and playing. I'd love to keep doing it for as long as is possible. I know it's not going to last forever, but we'll see what comes to pass."
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