Zander Clark praises midwife wife for helping him get through 'tough' time with no club before Hearts move

Zander Clark has praised his “trooper” wife for helping him get through a “tough” period without a club before sealing a move to Hearts.

The Scotland goalkeeper was unemployed for four months after leaving St Johnstone in 2022 with a series of potential moves falling through.

And while he was always confident of getting a new club, his partner Robyn – a midwife – took some convincing when she was coming home “knackered” every night.

The 31-year-old eventually got a move to Tynecastle in the September, initially as a backup goalkeeper, and hasn’t looked back since.

With club legend Craig Gordon suffering a horrific double leg break on Boxing Day of that year, Clark was handed the gloves and has since made the position his own and earned a callup to Steve Clarke’s Scotland squad.

This season he has played a big part as Hearts became the “best of the rest” raced away in third place of the Premiership and will likely be going to Germany in the summer for Euro 2024.

Reflecting on that spell without a club after leaving McDiarmid Park he said: “It was a really tough period for myself, I was always confident that there was stuff going on in the background but trying to get that message across to the wife was another story.

“Coming back from the honeymoon and everything was rosy to ‘I’ve not got a job here’. It was tough, there was always stuff going on and a few things fell through so obviously when the opportunity arose to sign here it was one that I was delighted to get done.

“She’s a midwife so she was coming in knackered and I had done my usual two training sessions for a combined total of about an hour and a half, and I was thinking I was knackered.

“It’s only then that you realise that she is the trooper in the household that was keeping us together at that point, but I managed to do it and where I am now is a credit to her.”