Terry Curran

Born Kinsley; March 20, 1955.

Terry Curran is a player who possibly wouldn’t have made it today as a footballer but he remains a shining example of why football was surely more enjoyable twenty years ago and beyond.

Curran’s problem now would not be a lack of ability, he had that in abundance, but his individuality would not be tolerated by many modern day coaches and his outspoken, impulsive temperament would have quickly convinced today’s automaton managers that they would be better off with a less volatile character.

They would no doubt prefer somebody who could be relied upon to cover a certain amount of yardage every week and trained like maniacs even if they never dribbled past half the opposition team to score a winning goal.

Curran was a player who always had the potential to pull of the spectacular and that is why he is remembered by a generation of fans to this day. Thirty years later his exploits and performances are still talked about and he remains a hero, especially to Sheffield Wednesday fans. How many players, especially those plying their trade in the lower leagues, will be remembered in such a way thirty years from now?

Terry Curran was born in Kinsley, a small Yorkshire village sitting pretty much in the middle of the counties’ football towns. His precocious talents were spotted by Doncaster Rovers and, having joined the club as a junior, it was with the Belle Vue club that he made his league debut in 1973.

Doncaster were a struggling fourth division side at that time but they provided a decent environment for the maverick talents of their young forward as Curran stepped into a side already boasting the considerable attacking talents of Peter Kitchen, Mickey Elwiss and Brendon O’Callaghan.

Incidentally, plenty of people would have you believe that modern football is vastly superior to that of yesteryear but it is hard to imagine a team from the bottom division being able to call on such an array of talent these days, especially one struggling at the foot of the table.

With a truly porous defence Rovers were always looking to attack and Curran was allowed to concentrate on the things he did best; taking on defenders, putting over crosses and going for goal.

Curran’s debut was in a 5-1 defeat at Gillingham early on in the season, such hidings were not uncommon, but it was not until later on in the campaign that the promising winger got his first prolonged run in the side.

Before this spell in the first team came his way Curran had enjoyed his first taste of the big time. Doncaster reached the 3rd round of the FA Cup and were drawn away to Liverpool. Curran was not involved as Rovers came close to pulling off a massive shock at Anfield before returning home with a 2-2 draw but was selected for the replay at Belle Vue. With league gates regularly dipping below the 2,000 mark a huge crowd of 22,499 crammed inside the ramshackle ground hoping to see an upset but Liverpool were hardly likely to be caught napping twice and ran out 2-0 winners.

Curran returned for his run in the league side away to Reading and again saw his team concede five, this time without reply, but manager Maurice Setters realised there was nothing to lose in sticking with the youngster and Curran had made a decent impression by the end of the season even though Doncaster did end up having to apply for re-election.

The following season Curran featured in all but two of Doncaster’s league fixtures and confirmed the good impression even though the team only improved marginally to finish the campaign in 17th position in the fourth division. He was an excellent dribbler, obviously confident in his own ability and extremely brave. Plenty of full backs went out to intimidate this cocky, tricky winger who had the pace and skill to make them look silly but few managed to subdue him for long.

Throughout his career Curran was the kind of player who would double his attempts to make a fool of any defender who resorted to violence to contain him and, rather than shy away from confrontation, he usually thrived on it.

Curran also scored seven goals during this season, a useful return from the wing. These goals were spread across seven different games and the scorelines provide a reasonable idea of the sort of team Doncaster were at that time. His goals came in a 5-2 defeat at Mansfield, a 7-4 drubbing at Shrewsbury, a 3-0 win against Torquay, a 4-3 thriller at home to Mansfield, a disappointingly commonplace 2-0 win at Stockport, a 3-2 victory over Swansea and a 3-3 draw with Exeter City.

Despite having only one full season of league football behind him Curran had already attracted the attention of several shrewd judges within the game and after just two games of the 1975-76 season, including a 2-2 draw at Tranmere in which he score both his sides’ goals, he had been snapped up by second division Nottingham Forest.

Forest had just appointed Brian Clough as manager and Curran was one of the first signings as he began his remarkable transformation of the club. Doncaster did pretty well out of the deal, getting a decent winger in Ian Miller and a lump of cash into the bargain, and it looked a good move for Forest and the player himself as Curran settled down to life in the second division with a fair degree of assurance.

After a disappointing debut, a 1-0 home defeat to Notts County, both Forest and Curran progressed steadily during this campaign with the club finishing 8th in the table and the player netting six goals from thirty three appearances. It is interesting to note that at this stage Curran was sharing the wings with John Robertson but it was he who was entrusted with the penalty taking duties.

The following season promised even better for both Curran and his new club as Forest started off in fine style and the winger chipped in with five goals from the first eleven league games. With everything apparently set fair, however, Curran suffered a bad injury during a 5-2 drubbing of Burnley and he would never be able to win his place back.

Tony Woodcock, who had ironically been out on loan to Doncaster, was recalled and never looked back. Forest themselves enjoyed consistent good form and ended the season clinching promotion back to the first division. Curran, recovered from injury, would only figure in another handful of games.

The volatile Curran was never likely to be content waiting around in the wings for his chance, although had he realised what was in store for Forest he might have thought a bit harder about his future, and soon made his feelings plain to Clough. The equally volatile manager was hardly likely to keep a dissatisfied player waiting around in the reserves and after a brief loan spell at Bury Curran was on his way to neighbouring Derby County for a £50,000 fee.

With Forest only newly promoted from the second division and Derby being recent league winners and FA Cup semi finalists it might have looked as though Curran had moved on to bigger and better things but nothing could have been further from the truth. Under the new management of Tommy Docherty Derby were a club not so much in transition as turmoil as Docherty tried to build his own team with ridiculous haste.

Curran was one of the few players to feature regularly as Docherty chopped and changed with abandon and the club did surprisingly well to finish a respectable 12th at the end of a season in which Forest shocked football by winning the League Cup and running away with the championship.

Despite having been one of Docherty’s few regulars the manager had no hesitation in dispensing with Curran’s services during the summer and £60,000 took the winger to Southampton, newly promoted themselves from the second division.

Despite being a regular first teamer at The Dell, and creating a decent enough impression, Curran’s stay with his new club would again be a short one and by the end of the season he would have moved on once more. Perhaps this was more a case of homesickness than anything else because both Curran and Southampton fared well during their short time together.

The Saints comfortably consolidated themselves in the first division and also enjoyed two fine cup runs. In the FA Cup they reached the 6th round with victories over Wimbledon, Preston North End and West Bromwich Albion before losing in a replay to Arsenal. The game at Highbury would be the only one Curran missed in that sequence.

In the League Cup they fared even better. Victories over Birmingham City, Derby County, Reading and Manchester City took The Saints to a two legged semi final meeting with Leeds United. Things looked bleak for Southampton as they fell two goals behind at Elland Road in the first leg but they recovered to snatch a draw and then a goal from Curran, the only one he would score for the club, was enough to win the second game and send them to Wembley.

Waiting in store for Curran were his former club, Nottingham Forest, and they proved too strong for his new one, retaining the trophy after a 3-2 win in a fine game in which Curran provided his share of the excitement but ultimately fluffed his lines when in a position to make a real impact.

There seemed little reason to suppose that Curran’s immediate future lay anywhere other than The Dell at this point but within a couple of weeks he had moved on for the fourth time in little over three years. Even more surprising was the fact that Curran now dropped two levels to join a club sitting mid table in the third division.

For a footballer who was just turning twenty four, had been a regular first division player for the past two seasons and just played in a major Wembley cup final a sudden drop into Division Three appeared on paper to be a seriously retrograde step in Curran’s career but in fact it proved to be a wonderful move for the player and the club he joined.

Despite having represented Forest, Derby and Southampton over the past few years Curran was arguably joining his biggest club yet in signing for Sheffield Wednesday. The Owls were a sleeping giant that were showing signs of stirring under the no nonsense management of Jack Charlton after a decade in decline. Wednesday had not been enjoying the best of seasons in the third division but had demonstrated their potential in a marathon FA Cup tie against Arsenal which they had only eventually lost after four replays.

Wednesday were a strong, well organised, competitive side but were lacking in creativity and flair. Their cup exploits helped provide the finance to address this problem and Curran was the man they turned to for inspiration. He would not disappoint.

Curran gave the Wednesday fans a hint of what they had in store during the remainder of the 1978-79 campaign but it was during the following season that his talents really started to flourish. Predominantly a right winger but given licence to roam Curran accepted the challenge of sparking the Wednesday attack with relish and simply wreaked havoc amongst the divisions’ defences.

Quick and with a beautifully fluid dribbling style Curran could glide past opponents either out wide or through the centre and was equally likely to set up chances for others from the flanks or strike for goal himself with a solo surge down the middle. As the team as a whole developed and grew in confidence their new talisman also showed himself to be a reliable finisher and he scored heavily as Wednesday launched a promotion challenge.

This would turn out to be a memorable season for Wednesday as gates began to soar with the team pressing for promotion in a division where the presence of Barnsley, Rotherham, Mansfield, Chesterfield, Grimsby, Hull and, most notably, Sheffield United ensured local interest was intense. Curran scored Wednesday’s first goal of the season in a 3-0 win at Barnsley on the opening day and provided many of the highlights during a campaign in which promotion was clinched on the final day but was effectively sealed over a week earlier on a rousing night at Blackburn when The Owls beat one of their major rivals 2-1 having trailed at half time.

Of all the memorable moments thrown up along the way, however, the games that remain lodged in the memories of all Wednesday fans of that era are the two meetings with Sheffield United and Curran’s part in these go a long way towards explaining his enduring appeal at Hillsborough.

The first meeting between the two clubs came on Boxing Day at Hillsborough. This was the first derby between the old rivals for eight years and despite the eleven o’clock kick off time a huge crowd of over 49,000 was shoehorned inside the famous old stadium to witness it.

United were top of the table at this point in the season with Wednesday just outside the promotion places but it was The Owls who claimed a famous victory. The first half was an even affair but Wednesday led at the break through a fierce drive by Ian Mellor from outside the box. The second half, however, turned into a slaughter as an inspired Curran ran amok.

First he sent a diving header into an open goal after the United defence had been sliced wide open, sinking to his knees provocatively in front of the massed ranks of United fans behind the goal, before setting up two further goals after slaloming dribbles through The Blades defence.

The first of these he ended with an unselfish square pass to present Jeff King with an open goal and then he was brought down as he rounded the United keeper for a penalty that Mark Smith stroked home to leave a rampant Wednesday 4-0 winners.

By the time of the return fixture at Easter United had slipped out of the promotion race but were desperately looking for revenge after “The Boxing Day Massacre”. But for Curran they might well have got it. United were leading at the break by the only goal but Curran salvaged a point for Wednesday with a piece of genius. Apparently hemmed in at the left hand corner flag by three opponents Curran doubled back and suddenly started racing back infield, retreating diagonally and side stepping challenges until he was about twenty five yards from goal when he abruptly smashed a searing cross shot just inside the far post for a fulminating equaliser.

How to become a legend in two easy lessons and Curran’s place in Hillsborough folklore remains assured.

Just for good measure when the two clubs met again at the start of the 1980-81 season in the League Cup Curran again scored a second half equaliser at Bramall Lane to ensure that United were unable to claw back a two goal first leg deficit.

It seemed a good bet that Curran would be heading back to the first division at this point, either with or without Wednesday, but his career had already just about peaked. The players’ own somewhat uneven temperament and an increasing susceptibility to injuries ensured that Curran never quite fulfilled his massive potential but this spell at Hillsborough was enough to make the player a legend among the Wednesday faithful.

Anybody who remembers Terry Curran at all will no doubt picture him most easily at this point in his career, in the blue and white stripes of Wednesday with his bubble perm and matching moustache. His look was totally in keeping with the times, somewhere between Boys From The Blackstuff and Dynasty, which in itself seems to neatly sum up the feelings he aroused. To his admirers he was a working class hero, to his detractors a drama queen.

The truth is that he was a fine footballer whose outstanding ability as well as his showmanship made him someone to either love or hate. There could be no half measures.

Wednesday acquitted themselves well on their return to the second division and Curran remained a key member of their attack. He had scored a hefty twenty two league goals during their promotion season and he contributed another nine as the club established themselves in the top half of Division Two.

As with many flair players Curran possessed a volatile, potentially destructive, side to his personality and this contributed to a deeply unpleasant incident early on in Wednesday’s first season back in the second division. With the club still riding the crest of their promotion wave Wednesday travelled to Oldham Athletic and took with them a huge following over The Pennines.

On a red hot afternoon at Boundary Park nobody was able to remain cool and things really boiled over when Curran became involved in a spat with Oldham’s Simon Stainrod, a player similar in style and temperament to Curran himself, and was sent off. The Wednesday fans took violent exception to their hero being dismissed and the game was held up for over half an hour as the visiting fans rained missiles from the terraces and invaded the pitch, ignoring a highly emotional plea from Charlton himself to desist.

It is possible that Charlton never quite felt the same for either the club or Curran, with whom he was rumoured to have had several differences of opinion, after this incident although they would continue to form an alliance for the next couple of years.

Having finished 10th in 1981 The Owls embarked on another promotion challenge the following season. Curran was still an important part of their attack although he was now being used as a more orthodox winger after the signing of Gary Bannister, a genuine poacher, to feed off the selected target man, either Andy McCulloch or John Pearson.

The system worked well and Wednesday looked a good bet for promotion all the way after starting the season with four straight wins. In fact promotion looked odds on by the middle of April when The Owls beat Cambridge United at Hillsborough to leave themselves six points clear of 4th placed Rotherham with five games remaining.

The only real danger looked to be Leicester City in 5th who were seven points adrift but had three games in hand after reaching the FA Cup semi finals. Leicester began to falter badly, however, which was just as well as Wednesday also started to tread water. The Owls went to Watford and were thrashed 4-0, all the goals coming in the first half, before drawing at home to Chelsea and away at Rotherham.

This sequence of results had left Wednesday vulnerable and it was Norwich City taking the most advantage. Nine points behind Wednesday in the middle of April they had won four games on the trot and now found themselves a point ahead of The Owls with two games to play. The Canaries were due at Hillsborough on the last day of the season but the showdown became irrelevant as Norwich gained another three points against Orient while Wednesday went to Bolton and lost.

Curran scored a first half goal and Wednesday reached the interval all square but Bolton, desperately battling against relegation, scored twice after the interval to save themselves and shatter their opponents’ promotion hopes.

Wednesday would beat Norwich the following week but that result only served to sharpen the disappointment at what they had thrown away over the final few weeks of the season.

Despite remaining a potent threat from the wing Curran had managed only three league goals during this season and, strangely, none at all at Hillsborough. There seemed little reason to believe anything other than that Curran would be one of the players Charlton was relying on to launch another promotion bid the following season but by now the Wednesday manager was beginning to either lose faith in his flamboyant forwards’ ability to torment opposition defences or to tire of their personality clashes.

In the summer of 1982, therefore, Wednesday fans were faced with having to deal with the loss of their biggest hero as Charlton decided to offload Curran. This was bad enough in itself but the fact that the team securing his services was arch rivals Sheffield United made the pill that much harder to swallow.

This transfer was almost inconceivable and it was difficult to imagine any of the parties benefiting overly. Wednesday’s loss might be imagined to be United’s gain but Curran was as much a figure of hate at Bramall Lane as he had been a hero at Hillsborough.

He would undoubtedly have his work cut out to win over the fans at United and there would probably be an element who would never be able to overlook his Hillsborough past or forget the image of him on his knees in front of the United fans on that famous Boxing Day morning.

Curran’s standing in Sheffield up to this point had been perfectly summed up by the wall at Hillsborough on which Wednesday fans had daubed, in huge blue letters, the slogan “KING CURRAN” only for United sympathisers to add the prefix of “FUC” in their own red paint.

From the start this promised to be an uncomfortable marriage for Curran and his new “fans” and so it proved. It also seemed strange that the player should be returning to the third division when his ability demanded a higher stage.

Despite helping to form a formidable looking forward line at Bramall Lane alongside the tricky Colin Morris and the prolific Keith Edwards things did not really click for Curran or his new team who remained unable to break clear of the middle reaches of the third division. The feeling that Curran and Sheffield United might be uncomfortable bed fellows was quickly given credence as the club agreed to loan the player out only a few months into his stay. This move would serve to emphasise the apparent anomaly of Curran moving into the third division in the first place as the club taking him for a month was first division Everton.

Howard Kendall was struggling to turn the Goodison Park club into a major force again and was finding it particularly difficult to unearth a winger to provide the teams’ forwards with chances and their fans with excitement. Joe McBride, Alan Ainscow and Alan Irvine had all been tried without being able to truly make the job their own and now the maverick Curran would have a month to stake his own claim.

The new man was able to create an excellent impression on Kendall and the Everton supporters during the month he spent at Goodison Park with a series of exciting, productive displays. Curran scored once and Everton only lost once during his loan period, which spanned seven games, and Kendall was certainly interested in making the move permanent.

Sheffield United were well aware of the excellent form of their man, however, and when Everton now came to talk terms the asking price had mysteriously increased and the first division club refused to meet it. Curran returned to Bramall Lane, no doubt somewhat disillusioned, and played out the rest of an unremarkable season with The Blades.

The player was not prepared to spend another season in the third division, however, and requested a transfer during the summer of 1983 which led to a long, drawn out saga of rumoured bids and speculation as to whether the player would actually play for the club if a move hadn’t been sorted out by the start of the following season.

Plenty of clubs were supposed to be interested in Curran but the player was still at Bramall Lane as the season started, though not in the starting eleven. Arsenal were being strongly linked with the winger but it was eventually Howard Kendall and Everton who ended up renewing their interest at the start of September and finally securing the deal that would take Curran to Goodison Park on a permanent basis.

The whole episode of Curran moving to Sheffield United had seemed somehow bizarre and the way it ended was in perfect keeping. United had paid Wednesday £100,000 for Curran and now, despite the fact they were selling him to a club two divisions higher and with other top flight clubs’ apparently interested, they received only £90,000 in selling him.

While the signing of a winger who is approaching thirty and is stepping up two divisions is not usually designed to raise a vast amount of anticipation among the supporters of a club the Everton faithful had Curran’s performances of the previous season fresh in their minds and his presence now was expected to provide a boost to a team still struggling to really gel. As it happened Curran would scarcely get the chance to reproduce the good form of his previous loan spell as he suffered a bad injury in his second game back at Goodison Park, during a goalless draw against West Brom, and it would be late on in the season before he was fit to return.

By the time Curran was able to return Everton had finally solved their problems on the flanks by signing Trevor Steven from Burnley and Curran would find it impossible to depose either Steven or the incumbent on the left hand side, Kevin Sheedy.

Neither Steven or Sheedy were out and out wingers but they provided Everton with magnificent service from the flanks. Both were superb distributors of the ball, either passing or crossing, and both chipped in with their fair share of goals. They also possessed the work ethic of genuine midfielders and played a huge part in the glorious run of success Everton now enjoyed. For two seasons Curran could do little but sit back and watch as his new club threatened to sweep all before them.

When Curran was fit to return to action Everton had already reached the League Cup final, losing narrowly to Liverpool after a replay, and were now challenging for a return to Wembley in the FA Cup. Curran was actually in the team that scraped an extra time victory over Southampton in the semi finals but was back on the sidelines when the team went back to Wembley to clinch the trophy with a 2-0 victory over Watford.

The following season Everton went from strength to strength but again Curran was only a peripheral figure. The club ran away with the league title, won the Cup Winners Cup and only missed out on a famous treble after losing in the FA Cup final to Manchester United.

Curran enjoyed one brief run in the side late on, playing in a sixth round FA Cup tie against Ipswich and both legs of a European tie against Dutch side Fortuna Sittard, but he would play no part in the semi finals or finals of either cup competition or in the league run in.

It was obvious that the new and vastly improved Everton had no real need for Terry Curran and at the end of this season he was allowed to move on a free transfer to second division Huddersfield Town. Curran enjoyed a decent season at Leeds Road and certainly played his part in ensuring that the club retained it’s status but at the end of it he was moving on again.

Curran moved to Greece for a short spell at Panionis and then returned to England for brief, and unsatisfactory, stays with Hull City, Sunderland, Grantham Town, Grimsby Town and Chesterfield. Now in his thirties Curran was naturally slowing down and the injury problems that had been a feature of his later career also ensured that he was no longer the player that had thrilled Sheffield Wednesday supporters five years earlier.

Looking back from a distance Terry Curran’s career does not look particularly distinguished on paper and is hardly one of overwhelming achievement and glory. His real legacy are the exhilarating memories he left for the people who supported Sheffield Wednesday around the turn of the 1970’s and 80’s who will take his exploits with them all the way to the grave, no doubt handing them down like heirlooms to successive generations of Wednesday fans.

Some people, modern day coaches included, might not agree but surely this is the greatest legacy any footballer can leave and Terry Curran, extravagantly gifted and wayward in equal measure, surely deserves his place in football’s folklore.

Terry Curran Career Statistics
CLUB GAMES GOALS
Doncaster Rovers 68 11
Nottingham Forest 48 12
Bury (Loan) 2 0
Derby County 26 2
Southampton 26 0
Sheff Weds 125 35
Sheff Utd 33 3
Everton (Loan) 7 1
Everton 17 0
Huddersfield Town 34 7
Hull City 4 0
Sunderland 9 1
Grimsby Town 12 0
Chesterfield 1 0
TOTAL 412 70