It is at this time of year that Jeremy Clarkson, that noted polymath, routinely sends out an annual tweet consoling candidates who, as did he, received terrible grades in their school exams.
Just because you didn’t grasp your first chance at setting up a successful career doesn’t mean other opportunities cannot be found in future, so goes the message.
Those unfortunate enough to receive regular exposure to some of his more strident opinions might quietly suggest that it would not have done him harm to absorb a little more education at a younger age. But on this specific point, Clarkson’s namesake is quickly setting about proving him right.
Leighton Clarkson will turn 21 in just over eight weeks, an age by which most footballers who go on to enjoy impactful careers have already started to build their reputations. More, certainly, than a couple of starts in de-prioritised cup ties and five and a bit hours’ game time in a prematurely curtailed loan spell with his boyhood club.
Arriving in Aberdeen to make up for lost time, Clarkson is already causing ripples far beyond those he has created in the nets of St Mirren and St Johnstone. When a player scores an early goal-of-the-season pacesetter, then two weeks later blows it out of the water himself, people sit up and take notice.
The midfielder is, mercifully, the first Clarkson to hold court at Pittodrie but he is not the first Leighton, and it is high praise to say that even his other namesake would not have got near stopping the incredible free kick which decided Saturday’s match.
The power and precision with which the ball blazed into the top corner was astonishing and unplayable. Those are words with which Aberdeen’s newest star may become increasingly synonymous once he hits top gear.
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