Happy Birthday Jamie Clapham
On this day in 1975, Mr and Mrs Clapham (presumably) gave birth to a bonny baby they named Jamie, who went on to play for his local team. It wasn’t Roy of the Rovers stuff when he pulled on the red and white and he suffered from being a decent player in a very bad team.
He was the one that slipped through the net, a Lincoln-born youngster who somehow found his way to Tottenham instead of our own youth set up. In March 1998, he cost Ipswich £300,000 and after five good years at Portman Road Birmingham decided to outlay £1.3m for him. It’s fair to say Clapham was a decent player.
By the time he finally returned to his hometown club he had obviously played his best football, and he came in at a time of absolute carnage and disarray. Chris Sutton brought him in to add experience to his squad, meaning Steve Tilson inherited him when he took up the reigns. He was constantly involved in a battle against injury, as you’d expect any 35-year-old pro to have. It all combined to make his home coming a miserable one.
If you take league position into account then Clapham didn’t have the best of times at Lincoln, but I always thought he had the experience and ability to help keep us in the league. If we could have seen a bit more of him on the pitch his calming influence might (I stress might) have helped those younger players who didn’t seem to have the heart for the fight.
He missed almost all of that dreadful run-in, returning half fit for the 3-0 trouncing by Aldershot. He wasn’t there as we lost 4-0 to Gillingham, or 6-0 to Rotherham or even 5-1 to Shrewsbury. Could he have made a difference? Could he have helped secure those two points that would have kept us up? Who knows. One thing is for sure, it wasn’t the veteran defenders fault we went down.
Never known a single player dominate a whole season like Bob Cumming did in 1987/88.