The Thistle Archive

In the summer of 1966 several prominent clubs (Rangers, Celtic, Dundee, Ayr United, Kilmarnock, St Mirren) were being linked with Shettleston's free-scoring centre-forward. In mid June, Willie Thornton offered him terms and, sure enough, the 19-year-old Drew signed his first professional contract as a Thistle man on a part-time basis. At Firhill, he got off to an amazing start on 13th August 1966, netting a debut hat-trick for the Reserves in a 5-2 League Cup win over Falkirk. Four days later, he scored again, but the 1-8 loss away to Dunfermline in the same competition was much less enjoyable. A brace for the Reserves followed in a 3-1 league win over Motherwell in early September.

Following a 1-6 loss to Rangers in the opening league game of the season, manager Willie Thornton was in the mood to ring the changes and three of the youngsters from the Reserves - Sandy Caddell, Bobby Mitchell and Drew Clarke - were handed their first-team debuts for match day two, at home to Clyde on 17th September 1966. Disastrously, the boys were one down to a header in just 30 seconds. Thistle rallied, but their neat midfield work came to nothing. Clyde were much more effective, hit the post and had a goal wrongly disallowed late on. It was a notable day as Joe Hogan appeared for the last time but had to leave the field injured after 53 minutes. Jackie Campbell replaced him, becoming Thistle's first used sub since the new twelfth man set-up was introduced that summer.

Drew was the only one of the young trio who retained his place for the trip to Easter Road 7 days later, but he might have wished he hadn't, the Jags being well and truly humbled; Hibernian 7 Partick Thistle 0. Drew hit the bar with the keeper well beaten (46) but Thistle were seldom seen in attack. Hibs (playing a 4-2-4 system) stayed joint top. Thistle remained pointless at the bottom, on merit. That proved to be Drew's last game for the first team and he continued in the Reserves until being freed in April 1968.

He joined Ayr United in the summer of 1968 and played his part in what was a succesful season for the Honest Men, scoring 6 goals in 10 league appearances as they finished runners-up to Motherwell and gained promotion back to the top-flight. Unfortunately, he never got to play with Ayr at that level, once again being freed in April 1969. Moving Southwards, Drew played in the Cheshire County League with Rhyl in season 1969-70, before returning to Scotland for a second spell at Shettleston Juniors but, for some reason, was surprisingly placed on their open-to-transfer list as early as October 1970. His last throw of the dice as a footballer was with Clydebank in 1971-72, where he made his only 3 league appearances in October. Perhaps his career trajectory was best summed up on 23rd October 1971. Whilst Thistle were defeating Celtic 4-1 to lift the League Cup at Hampden, Drew was at Kilbowie playing his last senior game; Clydebank 1 Cowdenbeath 4.