NEWCASTLE UNITED old boy Frank Clark heaved a sigh of relief as the club finally ended its long wait for a major trophy.
Clark, a veteran of the Newcastle’s 1969 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup win, and his team-mates have spent the intervening years hoping to be eclipsed by a new generation of Magpies, but in vain until Sunday’s Carabao Cup final victory.
Bob Moncur, the last Newcastle skipper to get his hands on silverware until Bruno Guimaraes succeeded him, has repeatedly spoken of how desperate he was to shed that tag, and Clark, who spent almost 13 years at St James’ Park, admitted he was thrilled that it had finally happened.
The County Durham-born 81-year-old said: “Absolutely. I had the same thing. People would say, ‘It’s better for you that they haven’t won another trophy’, but it wasn’t like that at all. The longer it went on, the worse it got. That’s gone now and we’ve got something else to talk about.”
Clark played in both legs of the 1969 final as the Magpies beat Hungarian side Ujpesti Dozsa 6-2 on aggregate, and is also a veteran of the 1974 FA Cup final in which they went down 3-0 to Liverpool at Wembley.
Asked if Sunday’s 2-1 victory over the Reds had provided a measure of revenge, he said: “I’ve never been one for revenge.
“I was absolutely delighted. They played really well and thoroughly deserved to win. It’s brilliant for the club, the fans and the city.”
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However Clark, who went on to win the European Cup with Nottingham Forest after leaving Tyneside, did admit he could not have imagined it would be another 56 years before the St James’ trophy cabinet would be unlocked once again.
He said: “When we won in 1969, we thought it might be us again in the next year or two, but it wasn’t to be. But no, you never thought it would be so long until they won something again.”
Newcastle’s maiden League Cup success ended a 70-year wait for a major domestic trophy and marked a significant milepost in head coach Eddie Howe’s mission to establish the club among English football’s elite under their Saudi-backed owners.
Key to that is retaining their best players – Alexander Isak scored his 23rd goal of the season at Wembley, where Italy international Sandro Tonali shone in a fine team performance – and former Leyton Orient, Forest and Manchester City manager Clark believes silverware could help them do just that.
He said: “You have to look at the club in total. Eddie himself has said this, they need to strengthen the squad if they can next season. I’m sure the owners want to do more, but obviously they’re hamstrung a little bit by the PSR restrictions.
“But they’ll certainly need to strengthen and get more depth into the squad, and probably the most important thing is that they can hang on to their best players.
“They’ve got some real top, top players in that team and winning (the final) will help them to hang on to them.”
