Captain of the Northern Ireland Under-21s and then a full International, Sammy never played for the Wolves first team, but had two extremely successful loan spells at Chesterfield - he was credited as being key to their surprising charge towards the top 6 of League One in the first half of 2005-2006, and certainly they subsided alarmingly down the table once he signed for us. Clingan signed only about a fortnight before Megson resigned.

Mobile, tidy, strong in the tackle and a decent ball player, in his first few games Clingan looked a decent player when fielded in his preferred position in the centre of midfield. At times after Nicky Southall was injured Sammy was asked to fill in on the right, where he didn't look anything like as good.

The Summer of 2006 saw Clingan blossom, with his first full Northern Ireland caps on a tour of the USA and the arrival of Colin Calderwood, who seemed immediately to realise Sammy's talent and to cement him into the centre of midfield. Alas, just as the season was starting to come to a boil, Clingan broke his ankle in early March, thus missing the rest of the season. Since at the time we pretty much no-one else who could do his job, this was a grave blow - though it did at least allow Lewis McGugan (an entirely different sort of player) to stake his claim with an extended run in the side.

Clingan's best period coincided with the arrival of Neil Lennon in the Summer of 2007 - Lennon allowed Sammy and Chris Cohen to get forward with some purpose, safe in the knowledge that if things broke down the defence had cover. When, later in the season, Lennon was allowed to leave, Clingan was often asked to fill in as the "holding" midfield player, and looked nothing like as good as a result. On occasions - notably a superb 70-minutes at Northampton after James Perch had been sent off, when Sammy & Cohen took the game by the scruff of the neck and never let go - he could be excellent, but at other times he looked pretty ordinary, with the sideways pass being pretty much his only option week after week.

None the less, when Clingan's contract ran out in the Summer immediately following Forest's promotion, we all assumed that he'd sign a new one - his international career needed him to be playing higher than League One, but that was no longer an issue.... Needless to say he promptly signed for Norwich, Forest having taken the (correct, in my view) decision that they wanted to keep him, but not at any price; we could do better for the money he was asking. He did well at Norwich personally, adding some goals to his locker with the occasional blistering free kick, but the club were relegated anyway, so in the summer of 2009 he joined Coventry.