REBIRTH OF THE BLUES
Our chat with former Birmingham City captain Ian Clarkson could not be more timely. With Chris Davies’ Class of 2025 at St Andrew’s charging towards promotion and preparing for a Wembley final, Ian refers to a rebirth of the Blues. He is perfectly-qualified to use that phrase.
Back in the early 1990s, Ian was an integral part of the Blues team that emerged from the desolation of the second half of the ‘80s to win a Wembley final and then, with Ian as captain, earn promotion back to the second tier. The echoes with 2025 are unmistakeable and Ian engagingly shares his first-hand experience of what it’s like to be part of the rebirth of the Blues. His passion for the club remains as great as ever as he gives his views on the current owners and the club’s impending departure from St Andrew’s.
But our conversation covers much more than Birmingham City. Ian has travelled far since 6.15pm on September 27, 1988, when Garry Pendrey pinned the teamsheet on the dressing room wall to reveal that a 17-year-old Clarkson would make his debut against Aston Villa in the League Cup that night.
If there is one takeaway above all from the first three epidoes of Reports from Arbroath it is that a sportsperson needs high levels of resilience - within and beyond sport. Olly Hannon-Halby overcame rejection by Yorkshire and serious injury. Liam Norwell dealt with the devastation of injury-enforced early retirement to launch a promising career in a totally new direction. Ian Clarkson too had to get his head around serious injury. I was at Sixfields on August 31st, 1998, when Ian, playing for Northampton, sustained a broken leg in a 0-0 draw with Lincoln City.
It was a shattering blow but he showed the resilience first to return to football and play over 100 games for Kidderminster Harriers and then to build careers as a journalist and then a teacher. Ian offers fascinating poacher-turned-gamekeeper insights into his reporting from the St Andrew’s pressbox. He spent six years as a sports journalist just at the time when sports journalism was evolving more dramatically than in the previous 50 as clubs sought much greater control of reporting about them.
Ian saw the way the wind was blowing in sports journalism and transferred from newsroom to classroom. Journalism’s loss was very much teaching’s gain!
You can subscribe to Reports From Arbroath:
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
RSS