Every time Darrell Clarke returns to his roots in Mansfield, where he grew up on the Ladybrook estate, he walks into a world of pain. He visits his uncle, Russ, and elder brother, Wayne, who still live in the town, but it is also there, in the cemetery off Nottingham Road, where his grandmother, Sheila, his mother, Doreen, and eldest daughter, Ellie, are buried within yards of each other.
He last went a few weeks ago. His gran brought him up after his mum died in a car crash when he was two. His grandfather was a turnstile steward at Mansfield’s Field Mill. His father was an alcoholic.
“When I go back it kills me for days after because I’m sitting at my daughter’s grave and my mum and gran are over here,” he says, referencing their double coffin. “How can I put it? It’s fucking hard, that. The triple whammy of it just hits me.”
The phone call informing him Ellie had died, aged 18, will always haunt him. It was Valentine’s Day last year and Clarke was having a glass of wine at the then long-time family home in Southampton. “I walked around my kitchen all night, just screaming,” he says. “I have got a lot of anger and bitterness inside me. I couldn’t be there any more, I couldn’t walk past her room.”
It is a year since the two-day inquest into Ellie’s death. The inquest returned a verdict of suicide, which he wholeheartedly disagrees with. “It was a cry for help that went drastically wrong, in my opinion,” he says. “One that ripped the family apart.”
Clarke feels the authorities failed his daughter, who wanted to be a veterinary nurse. “She had a bloody green dragon … what are those lizards called?” Clarke says. “Bearded dragon! I remember her phoning once crying with laughter because she’d had some cockroaches delivered, live in the box – and she dropped the bloody box and they were all flying around. She was saying: ‘Dad, they are everywhere!’” He smiles as he recalls the memory.
Every now and then Clarke’s words are laced with humour but listening to him detail the raw anguish of losing his daughter is sobering. At the time Clarke was in charge of Port Vale. He took six weeks of compassionate leave but felt compelled to return and led Vale to League One promotion, via a Wembley playoff final. “If I look back now, I came back way too early,” the 45-year-old says, talking in his manager’s office at Cheltenham Town’s training ground.
In a television interview after the final whistle, voice breaking, lips quivering, body swaying, he dedicated the 3-0 victory over Mansfield to Ellie. In the eighth minute, a nod to Clarke’s number when he played for his hometown club, both sets of supporters stood to applaud in a moving show of support. Before his players left the dressing room, Clarke played Ellie Goulding’s How Long Will I Love You, the song played at Ellie’s funeral, picked by Katie, her 15-year-old sister.
“Just two or three lines,” he says. “Everyone’s quiet, a few of the lads were in tears. I stopped it [the music] and said: ‘Lads, I buried my daughter to that. But this game’s not life or death. I’m so proud of you, so proud of how you’ve gone about it. We’ve already won. Just go out there and enjoy it.’”
Before this interview Clarke stresses nothing is off-limits. He is straight-talking, not one to sugarcoat reality. “But let me tell you I was in floods of tears,” he says, recalling the morning of Vale’s crunch game at Exeter in May 2022, the final day of the regular season. Vale were wobbling after losing three games on the spin and needed a win to maintain promotion hopes.
“For three hours I was crying in my [hotel] room. Then I had to come out for the game and put the mask on, shall we call it. A lot of days I didn’t want to get my head off the pillow. I didn’t move out of my bed for six weeks after I lost my daughter. There is so much grief you are dealing with.” A video message from the superstar Vale supporter Robbie Williams lifted him a little. “What a guy … he said I’d won in his eyes. To get out of bed, after what I’d been through – ‘you’re a winner in my eyes,’ he said. I still get the odd message from him.”
Clarke is eternally grateful for the support of the League Managers Association (LMA), Vale, family, friends and the wider footballing fraternity. More than 30 of his former players attended Ellie’s funeral, including Tom Lockyer, now of Luton Town, who he made his captain at Bristol Rovers. The former Chelsea and Brighton manager Graham Potter, alongside whom Clarke did his Uefa pro licence, was among those to send messages. The LMA has provided Clarke and his family with access to counsellors.
“I want to leave a good legacy. Ellie was so proud of me and I want to do more. I don’t want to go off the rails and be that victim of life.
“There’s loads of other people worse off than me, there’s loads of people who have suffered grief in their lives. My gran never lived her life a victim. She could have easily given up on me and my brother, [and] not took custody of us. My gran never gave up so why should I give up? And I want to achieve more than I’ve ever wanted to achieve.”
His mum died on his grandmother’s birthday. “We could never celebrate her birthday – no cards, no presents, no nothing.” It all rather puts into context the job Clarke has on his hands at Cheltenham. He took charge in September, when the club were bottom of League One with a solitary point and without a goal after 12 matches in all competitions. He has breathed belief into a club punching above its weight – they have the lowest budget in the division and one modest even by League Two standards – but mission impossible is very much alive after two wins and two draws from his first six matches.
On taking over he told his players 15 wins from 36 matches would give them a fighting chance. If he does steer Cheltenham clear of relegation, it would represent a footballing story for the ages. “We had a nightmare start: no goals. A lot of people said: ‘What are you thinking?’ But I am really enjoying the job.”
Clarke is a master of tough love. At Walsall he had Eli Adebayo, who now plays in the Premier League for Luton. “Let me tell you how much work that took for six months. I can remember one game, going in and saying: ‘Well done, boys, well done, because we played with 10 men here because that guy has not tried a leg.’ He had to learn.”
Ellie is a fixture in his thoughts. “I see magpies now and I call them Ellie. ‘There’s Ellie, there’s Ellie with her mate.’” But, while acknowledging the landscape of his life will never be the same, Clarke is seeking normality. “I don’t want to be treated as the football manager who lost his daughter,” he says. He felt in his final months at Port Vale that people mistakenly read into his actions, from raging at his players to taking dinner alone, an association with grief. “It wasn’t because I lost Ellie,” he says. “I started to get very frustrated.”
Clarke has taken charge of almost 600 games since his managerial career started in non-league as player-manager at Salisbury City and a couple of hours in his company throws up all manner of stories. There are tales of navigating politics behind the scenes at previous clubs, bumping into Roy Keane, his hero, in a car park and the time Clarke took his Bristol Rovers team to Neil Warnock’s Cardiff City for a behind-closed-doors friendly. “I asked him if the ref was coming,” Clarke says, laughing. “‘No! I’m reffing it!’ He’s telling his players: ‘Shut up, that’s not a free-kick!’” But, after touching on the art of the team talk, Clarke needs to go. “Right, I’ve got to speak to my counsellor,” he says.
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 988 or chat for support. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
