“Every dream, if dreamed too long, turns into a nightmare,” the renowned author Andrzej Sapkowski once said. “And we awake from such dreams screaming.”
What’s the worst day you’ve ever had at work? Maybe you called your boss ‘babe’ by mistake, maybe you stumbled over by the water cooler and a couple of people laughed at you, something trivial like that. Anyway, imagine in your mind whatever that worst day entailed, and then remember that it won’t have been as bad as Harry Clarke’s.
His happened in front of 17,109 people and many, many more watching on television. This is the most-watched football league in the world, after all. Oh, Harry.
The lad had been dreaming of his full Premier League debut for his hometown club for quite a long time. He’s from Ipswich. It meant more. If there were any screams after his dream turned into a nightmare he unleashed them in private, but they were surely emanated.
It really couldn’t have gone any worse for him. And the contrast from the giddy euphoria of Ipswich Town going 2-0 up against Brentford before crumbling and drowning like a weak biscuit in a cup of tea couldn’t have been more stark.
Clarke was heavily involved in the latter as Ipswich shipped three goals in quick succession, part of a period of 24 minutes in which Clarke achieved undesirable Premier League history with the following incidents:
- A comical own goal as Yoane Wissa’s shot bounced despairingly off his hand and over the line to make it 2-2.
- He conceded a penalty when dragging Keane Lewis-Potter to the ground. Bryan Mbeumo converted the spot kick to give Brentford a 3-2 lead.
- He fouled his nemesis Lewis-Potter again just outside the Ipswich box to earn a second yellow card and was sent off.
Wissa’s shot deflected off Clarke and into the back of the net (Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)
Clarke wasn’t meant to play at the Gtech Community Stadium. The 23-year-old, a key part of Ipswich’s promotion from the Championship last season having joined his local team after coming through the ranks at Arsenal, underwent surgery on an Achilles problem in the summer and manager Kieran McKenna had wanted to ease him back into action.
With Ben Johnson and Axel Tuanzebe out injured, Clarke, who made his Premier League debut off the bench during the 2-0 defeat at home to Everton last weekend, was thrown in from the start.
“One of our own, he’s one of our own, Harry Clarke, he’s one of our own,” the rambunctious travelling Ipswich fans sang in the first half as the Tractor Boys looked to finally be getting to grips with the whole Premier League thing, 2-0 up and heading for an overdue first victory.
Clarke must have felt 10ft tall. He was probably fantasising how he was going to celebrate later on Saturday night. A full Premier League debut, fans singing his name, winning 2-0 and with a clean sheet, absolute perfection. Exactly how he dreamt it.
Instead, in completing football’s worst hat-trick of scoring an own goal, conceding a penalty and getting sent off as his and Ipswich’s world disintegrated, Clarke became the first player in Premier League history to endure all three on his full debut.
In fact it had only happened once before, to Southampton’s Jan Bednarek against Manchester United in February 2021. There are few things that would make Clarke feel any better right now, but at least his team didn’t lose 9-0 like Saints did that day.
“I’m getting goosebumps thinking about it!” Clarke said at the prospect of his Premier League debut after Ipswich earned promotion. “What an exciting time.”
You could only feel more sorry for him if he was a tiny little puppy giving inconsolable sad eyes as its owners left home.
There are plenty of examples of nightmarish debuts that still had a happy ending. Jonathan Woodgate did two of Clarke’s three things, scoring an own goal and getting a red card, when making his Real Madrid debut in 2005, but would later win the League Cup with Tottenham Hotspur (hey don’t knock it, they’ve won nothing since), while Joao Felix was sent off on his Chelsea debut last year (while on loan from Atletico Madrid) but that didn’t stop them paying £42million for him in the summer.
And then that chap called Lionel Messi was sent off 30 seconds into his Argentina debut against Hungary in 2005, and he did absolutely fine, you’d say.
“It was not like I had dreamed it would be,” Messi said. This was not how Clarke had dreamt it either.
McKenna had sympathy. “It’s his Premier League debut and he’s not stated a game since April, so he’ll get plenty of support from us,” he said.
“He did some good things in the game — there were some good things in his performance — but there were a few things, of course, a few defensive moments that’ll he’ll want to do better on and he’ll be disappointed with.
“But he’s a young player making his Premier League debut, coming back from a very big injury, and because of injuries we have we’ve had to throw him pretty much straight into the team, where ideally he’ll have had a longer period of maybe coming off the bench.
“Like all of our players and our culture, he’ll take his mistake on the chin I’m sure and look to learn from it, work harder and work hard on those things in training and come back again strong.”
McKenna admitted he had contrasting emotions of different extremes — pride at seeing his Ipswich team play so well and score three times but devastation at still ending up as the losing side.
For poor Clarke, it was merely the latter.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
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