Billy Clarke took little time to introduce himself to the Cobblers’ faithful on Saturday with a historic hat-trick that set records aplenty. The striker, who has already scored four in one game this season at Macclesfield whilst on loan to Darlington, shot his way into Cobblers folklore with both the quickest debut goal in Town history and the first hat-trick for a debutant since Cliff Holton in 1961.
In fact, no Cobblers player at all had hit a hat-trick for nearly five years, the last being Marc Richard’s four goal effort at, ironically, Macclesfield, that held the position of the last Town hat-trick.
Rico could even have had five that day with one disallowed but for years we waited for someone else to step up to the plate and score three in one game. Bayo has come close, indeed on the opening day of this season he unselfishly set up Leon Constantine when he could easily have sealed his hat-trick. But we only seem to realize how long it’s been since a hat-trick when it actually happens again and it’s incredible to think of the length of time that’s passed since Rico’s goal fest at Moss Rose.
Since then we’ve been involved in two playoff campaigns, one promotion and a couple of solid seasons in League One so surely you would expect someone to have hit three at once in that successful time for the club.
Big Bayo has arguably been the closest to getting the next hat-trick with the aforementioned Cheltenham game along with the Carling Cup tie at Bolton so nearly bringing him his moment of glory. His sheer presence and power will more than likely soon pay dividends to a golden game for himself.
But for now it’s his new strike partner that holds the glory and it’s an intriguing partnership that Bayo and Billy now have in place, for a month at least! We can only hope that Clarke continue to shine alongside Bayo and does enough to earn a longer loan deal at Sixfields which would surely take us to within the realms of League One safety once again.
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