Remembrance: Dave Clement Would Have Turned Sixty Today

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Today would have been Dave Clement's Sixtieth Birthday.
Born February 2, 1948, right back, Dave Clement tragically died in 1982.
After making his debut in April 1967 (a few weeks after the League Cup triumph), Clement made 400+ Appearances, scoring 20+ goals for QPR. After QPR's relegation in 1978/79, Clement was sold to Bolton, where he briefly played and moved on to Fulham and then Wimbledon. Played 5 times for England but not nearly as much as he should have.
Clement was an integral part of QPR's 1967/68 promotion team; QPR's 1972/73 promotion team and of course, QPR's 1975/76 "Championship" team, playing alongside his fellow "home grown" and England full back, Ian Gillard.

Photos: Photo I - Photo II - Photo III -

See: QPR Career See Also Wikipedia/Dave Clement Profile

Nice Profile/Memory of Dave Clement on Daves's Queens Park Rangers Site - Dave Clement Remembered

March 2006 Independent Profile/Interview with WBA's Neil Clement, son of Dave Clement & QPR includes Memories of Dave Clement
"...As more eye-catching individuals have fallen by the wayside, the 28-year-old utility player goes from strength to strength and will be involved at The Hawthorns this afternoon as Chelsea seek to honour the memory of Peter Osgood by tightening their grip on the Premiership title. These days, however, Clement is a West Bromwich Albion player. More importantly, given Albion's position just above the relegation zone, Clement is a survivor.
The wretched irony of such an epithet is that his father, the former Queen's Park Rangers and England defender Dave Clement, did not survive to see his son uphold the family honour. Depressed after a serious injury that he sustained as a fine career began fizzling out in the Fourth Division at Wimbledon, he took his life. Neil was three years old.
Too young to understand the enormity of what had happened, he and his brother Paul - who was then 10 and is now coaching Fulham's young players - grew up in the Midlands after his mother decided to move from London. "It wasn't particularly a football environment, so maybe it was in the blood," Clement recalls. "Like any kid, I loved the game. And there was always the incentive of following in my dad's footsteps."
In his mid-teens he was offered a scholarship at the FA's National School at Lilleshall in Shropshire. By the second year, his room-mate, Jody Morris, was already attached to Chelsea and told him the club wanted to sign him. "I'd always had a soft spot for QPR because of my dad, and it's an ambition of mine to play for them one day," he says. "But I went down to Stamford Bridge for a look around when I was 15, and of all the clubs that were interested, that was the one that really grabbed me."....
The odd physio, kit man and coach is still at the Bridge from Clement's five-year stint, but a single player remains, and not the one he and others envisaged as the future of Chelsea. "Jody [Morris] was the outstanding talent as a teenager. He has been unlucky in the way things happened to him off the pitch. The way Chelsea developed as a club didn't help him either. I thought he would kick on when he finally left, but it hasn't really happened for him."
The contemporary who stayed was, of course, John Terry, an occasional golf partner of Clement's. "John was a couple of years younger, though we played in the youth team together. He always loved defending even as a kid. We would be messing about in training and he would throw his body in the way of anything. Totally fearless. But he has taken it on to a different level, the way he reads the game and leads the side..."
Like father, like son A player in the image of his old man
"Strong and powerful, a good athlete and a very upright runner, like his dad," says Gerry Francis of Neil Clement. "You can see the resemblance, and not just in his looks. You can tell he's Dave Clement's son."
Francis played with the late Dave Clement for Queen's Park Rangers and England . Neil is left-footed whereas Dave was an overlapping right-back, but intriguingly, given the West Bromwich player's liking for centre-back, his father switched from central defence only after joining QPR in 1965.
Neil knew Dave won five caps, two in World Cup qualifiers against Italy, and that his 405-game sojourn at Rangers included a runners-up spot behind Liverpool in 1976. He had the word of Francis and others that Dave was an outstanding player, but he was too young to have seen him play.
"Dave Sexton, his old manager at QPR, asked John Motson if he could put something together from old video tapes," explains Neil. "I still watch it. But I also meet loads of people who remember him."
Francis, for one. "Dave was a bit older than me, but we both came through the youth team at QPR and played in the same side for 10 years or more. We roomed together, we went on international trips together. I knew his wife, Pat, well and, though I'd moved to Crystal Palace and he was at Wimbledon, they came down to a place I had in the South of France in the summer before his suicide. His death came as a major shock to all of us who were at QPR, and it's still hard to put into words how we felt. "
Francis is glad to see another Clement establish himself at the game's top level. In a strange way, says Neil Clement, he believes his father has, too. "I feel he is with me in spirit and sometimes think he is up there watching over me.
"What's happened has happened, and it's a shame he isn't around to see how me and my brother Paul [a coach at Fulham] have got on. But I'd like to think he would be proud of what I've achieved." Report