Clive Walker was born on this day.

Clive Walker was born on this day.

Born on this day in Oxford is former Sunderland player Clive Walker, a tricky winger with bags of pace. If you saw him in his prime, you will know THAT penalty miss does not define his career.

His ability to beat his fullback was second to none, making his name at Chelsea, including a Man of the Match performance against Liverpool in the FA Cup in 1978. The mercurial attacker scored arguably the most important goal in Chelsea’s history; the only goal of the game in a victory over fellow strugglers Bolton,

when defeat would have meant almost certain relegation. This was before dirty Russian money cemented Chelsea’s place in the so called ‘big six’. Walker was key at Chelsea for a number of years, until falling out of love with the club in 1982. A contract dispute led to a transfer away from Stamford Bridge.

Walker joined the lads for around £70,000 in 1984. His finest moment in red and white was the hat-trick he scored at Roker Park against Manchester United in 1984. That season, he was the club’s top scorer with 14 League and Cup goals. After going 2-0 down to Ron Atkinson’s men,

Walker pulled one back after 16 minutes. Remarkably, Walker scored another two goals within three minutes of each other, both being penalties! After beating goalkeeper Gary Bailey to his left once, Walker repeated the feat by firing his second penalty to the keepers left again to seal a memorable hat trick.

In the Milk Cup semi-final, Walker famously scored against his former club at Stamford Bridge, causing an enraged fan to chase him around the pitch! The ex-Chelsea man helped Sunderland to a 5-2 win on aggregate, sending the lads to Wembley. However, in typical Clive Walker fashion the mercurial winger went on to miss a crucial penalty in the final, hitting the post as Norwich City won 1-0, with Sunderland defender Gordon Chisholm unfortunate to score an own goal after David Corner’s fatal error. A bad day all round.

After leaving Sunderland, Walker wound down his career back in London with QPR and Fulham before ending up playing non-league football with Woking and Cheltenham Town. With Woking, he won a hat-trick of FA Trophies, two decades on from his Chelsea debut. He added a fourth FA Trophy and reached 2nd in the Conference in 1998. His remarkable longevity means that he holds the record for being Cheltenham’s oldest ever goalscorer, at an insane 41 years old. Would Clive Walker ever expect two of his ex team, Cheltenham Town and Sunderland, to share the same league? Probably not in his wildest dreams. Alas, it happened and they even managed to beat us!

Between 1997 and 1999, Walker was a member of the Robins team that won the FA Trophy and then the Conference title a year later, despite being in his thirties, and he was frequently a standout player.

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