Clarke the silent star for Yeading

So, any chance of Clarkey telling us why he'd made such a selfless gesture just minutes before the biggest game of his life? "You won't get much from Clarkey. He's not into the limelight," reckoned Brown. "He was fantastic out there, though, wasn't he?"

He sure was, which was why we were all desperately seeking a few words from one David Clarke at Loftus Road. For an afternoon, the man who'd slogged anonymously around the the non-League pyramid for years was a colossus, shining more brightly for 'the Ding' than anything on view for the Bling-Bling.

A curling free-kick that almost gave Yeading an early lead, a couple of last-ditch, perfectly timed tackles, surging runs from midfield to provide all but a discomfited Toon Army with 45 minutes of unalloyed pleasure . . . Clarke was everywhere, playing as if Freddy Shepherd couldn't afford him. Jamie Redknapp watched Clarke's first-half performance from the pundits' seat and, like the rest of us, couldn't quite work out how a 33-year-old property developer had been running the show.

Even when reality inevitably bit with those second-half goals from Lee Bowyer and Shola Ameobi, Clarke's tireless prompting and badgering of weary team-mates ensured Yeading were going to achieve something more than mere respectability.

"That's Clarkey. Cajoling, criticising, barking at them. A lot of the boys were flagging but he was still there at 90 minutes, going toe to toe with Premiership players and not looking out of place," enthused assistant coach Dereck Brown. "A non-League Roy Keane, if you like."

So, how about a chat with him? "Ooo, you'll be lucky. He didn't even want to talk on the Beeb," warned the press officer. The local paper man added that, in two seasons, he'd never got a word out of Clarke. Blimey.

Then, just as all hope as being abandoned, a bloke in a Yeading blazer was to be found wandering the corridors searching vainly for the players' room. Gotcha!

"Did I enjoy it?" he pondered hard, looking cornered. "The game, yes, but not the build-up, all that hoopla. I just like playing football, that's all."

What about giving up the armband? "Darti loves being captain and is a great leader; I thought he deserved it. It doesn't bother me. No fuss, that's what I prefer," he said with a smile that couldn't hide that he seemed about as uncomfortable as Newcastle's £8million new boy Jean-Alain Boumsong had done all afternoon.

Clarke looked as if he'd be happy to get back to Yeading's real world. Next up, the big one: Harrow Borough, away. Leading the league and now with a couple of hundred grand banked from the Cup run, the club's promotion to the Conference was all that interested him, not the idea that, in Yeading folklore, they'd remember this as Dave Clarke's day.

"It doesn't matter," he smiled. "It was a game of football, that's all. And we lost." It was the one thing he'd got wrong all afternoon. Yeading were winners out there, reminding us - as Exeter and Stoke and Oldham had done, too - that the Cup is still English football's grandest hoot.

"Let's face it, what happened was no surprise," reckoned Newcastle's relieved boss Graeme Souness. "It's always been this way in the Cup and, please God, it'll never be any different." It won't be as long as it offers us the occasional hero, even of the most reluctant variety, such as Clarkey.