"It's a chance to be a part of something different, something new.”
Ink Sports Focus: STFC writer Sam Morshead talks to new Town signing, midfielder Ollie Clarke
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“Consistency. You look at the league and a lot of the teams can beat anyone. It is a tough league, where you have to work your socks off pretty much every game. There are no easy games in that league.”
By STFC writer Sam Morshead
“There is no secret ingredient. If you eradicate errors and run hard most teams can’t live with you.”
Ollie Clarke knows a thing or two about securing promotion from League Two, and Swindon Town’s new midfielder has emphasised that hard work and good structure are the most necessary characteristics of a successful side at this level.
Clarke arrived for an undisclosed fee from Mansfield Town earlier this month, bringing with him experience of two promotions out of the fourth tier – with the Stags last season and Bristol Rovers in 2015/16.
At 31 years old, and with 370 EFL appearances to his name, he has the credentials to comment on the challenge at hand as Town target a top-seven finish after two seasons of miserable decline at the County Ground.
And his main message: cut out the mistakes.
“Consistency. You look at the league and a lot of the teams can beat anyone. It is a tough league, where you have to work your socks off pretty much every game. There are no easy games in that league,” he told The Ink.
“At Mansfield, we concentrated on ourselves and what we did well. Over those four years, we came close two or three times but we knew we needed to eradicate errors. When you make errors at this level, you get punished. The fewer errors you’re making, the more solid your foundation.
“Goals can come from anywhere in League Two and we prided ourselves on our hard work. The way we played was quite nice but if you eradicate errors and run hard most teams can’t live with you. That is probably what I’ll be trying to tell the boys: there is no secret ingredient.
“You need a good striker who is going to score 15 to 20 goals and everyone else chipping in, but if you don’t concede many goals and you don’t give up many chances – like we did at Mansfield – it gives you a really solid foundation to build on.”
Sounds simple enough? Well, yes, but one glance at Swindon’s defensive performance in 2023/24 illustrates the size of the turnaround required this off-season.
In League Two last term, Town conceded 83 goals – only Sutton United and Notts County were leakier – and that number rose to 99 for the campaign when the knockout competitions were added to the mix.
Many of those goals, much to the frustration of supporters, came from individual errors or systemic defensive failures. Moments of brilliance from the opposition were all too unnecessary, as Swindon shipped more than two on 15 occasions.
The arrivals of Clarke and former Newport County centre-back Ryan Delaney, who has 170-plus EFL games to his name, go some way to addressing those sieve-like features – and the pair are expected to form the core of a new onfield leadership team.
Swindon’s two regular captains – Frazer Blake-Tracy and Charlie Austin – have both left the club, while it seems unlikely Jack Bycroft, who had the armband towards the end of last season, will get the role under Mark Kennedy.
Both Clarke and Kennedy have skippered teams in League Two, and in theory provide the roots of a central spine to a team whose naivety was routinely exposed in 2023/24.