Clarke started his career at Walsall and made his debut aged 16, then moved to Fulham. Such was his early promise that Leicester City then paid £150,000 for Clarke in 1968 when he had yet to play at the highest level.
He spent just one season at Leicester, reaching his apex in an appearance in the 1969 FA Cup final which Leicester lost to Manchester City. Weeks later, he was on his way to Leeds when Don Revie offered £165,000 to Leicester, and so began one of the deadliest goalscoring careers in English football.
Clarke peaked at Elland Road and he scored 26 goals in his first season (and earned the predatory nickname "Sniffer", which stuck throughout his career) as Leeds chased a dream "treble" of League championship, FA Cup and European Cup.
Clarke hit the post in the FA Cup final at Wembley (with strike partner Mick Jones following up to score the rebound) and then went on a mazy run through several Chelsea defenders in the replay to set up a goal for Jones again, but Leeds still lost.
The title had already gone to Everton on the last day of the season, and the European Cup campaign ended with defeat to Celtic in the semi-final.
The summer of 1970 gave Clarke an opportunity to take some consolation from an eventful but ultimately fruitless club season - he was called up for England's 1970 World Cup squad in Mexico, despite being uncapped, and made his debut for his country (and scored) against Czechoslovakia in the heat and pressure of a World Cup first round match, something which would be unthinkable today.
Clarke became an England regular thereafter and was in the Leeds side which won its second Fairs Cup in 1971 - scoring in the final against Juventus - while again missing out on the League championship in the last week of the season and losing to lowly Colchester United in the fifth round of the FA Cup (after which he was told by club medics that he was suffering from pleurisy).
But in 1972, his place in Leeds folklore would arrive. Leeds reached the FA Cup final again in the competition's centenary year and at Wembley they would face Arsenal, who were the Cup holders and had also denied Leeds the title the previous year.
In a tight and largely unexciting game, Clarke threw himself at a Jones cross midway through the second half, and the diving header nestled into the corner of the net. He had hit the crossbar with another diving header earlier in the game.
Leeds won 1-0 and Clarke finally had a winners' medal to go with his two for finishing runner-up. Naturally for Leeds, there still had to be some sourness to temper the sweet, and they lost the League title and the chance of emulating Arsenal's "double" when they lost to Wolverhampton Wanderers three days after winning the Cup.
Clarke played again at Wembley when Leeds were surprisingly beaten 1-0 by Sunderland in the 1973 FA Cup final. Later that year, he was in the England team which needed to beat Poland at Wembley to qualify for the 1974 World Cup.
A goal down, England were awarded a penalty from which Clarke coolly scored, but he was among many England players thwarted by the charmed and brilliant Polish goalkeeper Jan Tomaszewski.
A 1-1 draw was not enough and England did not go to the World Cup. Clarke was again Leeds' top scorer as he finally earned a title medal in 1974 as Leeds sauntered to the crown on a record run of 29 opening matches without defeat.
The following year he won his 19th and final England cap - he scored a healthy ten goals during his international career - and helped Leeds to the European Cup final.
Leeds lost the match to Bayern Munich 2-0 and were denied a clear penalty when Clarke was hacked down by Franz Beckenbauer in the penalty area. This was the last time the great 1960s and 1970s Leeds generation would be in contention for an honour in the game.
The Revie side started to break up - their manager had left in 1974 for the England job - and Clarke himself left the club in 1978 after 351 appearances and 151 goals, with a knee injury curtailing his ability to play at top-flight level.
His last major act in a Leeds shirt was to score in the 1977 FA Cup semi-final, but the game ended 2-1 to Manchester United.
He went to Barnsley as player manager and under him they won promotion in 1979, an impressive enough achievement for Leeds to ask their most famous goalscorer to come back as manager in 1980.
This proved a bad move, as sadly, Clarke also became remembered by Leeds fans as the man who took the club to relegation in 1982. Clarke has pursued business interests in recent years through being a travelling salesman for MTS Nationwide; a firm based at Wakefield, West Yorkshire.
He has, however, remained an outspoken critic of the game, and like all the Leeds players of the Revie era, has remained fiercely protective of the reputation of both the manager and the club.
He has become crippled by arthritic knees in recent years. Clarke was the second of five brothers to play the professional game - four of whom played for Walsall across three decades.
Frank was the only Clarke brother not to represent Walsall, playing for Shrewsbury Town, Queens Park Rangers, Ipswich Town and Carlisle United; Derek played for Walsall, Oxford United and Orient; Kelvin played for Walsall; and the youngest sibling, Wayne Clarke, played for Walsall towards the end of his career after very successful spells with Wolverhampton Wanderers, Everton (where he won the League championship in 1987) and Manchester City.