Slipped Through the Net: Clive Mendonca

Mendonca cost a miniscule £85,000, a fraction of the three-quarters of a million received for Shaun Cunnington from Sunderland which funded the purchase.

Super Clive scored goals sporadically for the Mariners, then was out injured for a season. Returning with a hat-trick against Ipswich, then criminally Brian Laws - we keep coming back to that man in these articles and it is really hard to find much positive to say about him looking at the players he sold/alienated/ignored/disrespected - only offered him a short-term contract. Clive scored 20 goals in a season, the Mariners were relegated regardless. Clive decided to stay in Division One.

I have to mention a poem here written in a Rotherham fanzine:

Ode to Clive Mendonca:

'Farewell then Clive Mendonca
Your surname rhymes with plonker
How apt.'

Obviously Yorkshire's loss was Town's gain. Name any Rotherham player in the 1990s who has achieved as much as Clive Mendonca......

Next port of call was Charlton Athletic, Clive's first club away from the North East of England. (Memories of a TV interview with Alan Curbishley: "well guv we've signed this guy Clive Mendonka ya know and can't get a word he sez cos he's from San-dah-land, but he's gonna be gud for us...) He was good, helping Charlton to promotion in his first season there, including a hattrick at Wembley in the epic 4-4 playoff final against..... his hometown club Sunderland.

Clive remains at Charlton, and aside from a few appearances in the 99-00 season, and a handful of goals, he has struggled with his old injuries and failed to play a single game in the last campaign - a losing struggle it would appear. Perhaps he is now paying the ultimate price for his sterling early work at Blundell Park, where heavy punishment was received from challenges from behind - hence frequent back and hamstring injuries.

Hopefully we have not seen the end of his career yet, although his continued absence is a worry for both Charlton fans and all those Town fans that remember Super Clive as one of the better players to pull on a Mariners shirt in the nineties.

Dan Humphrey