County visit Curzon Ashton on Saturday in a 3pm kick-off and, ahead of this Vanarama National League north tie, County Tweet-meister (as quoted on the BBC Tweet of the Week more than once) Gareth Evans has, once more (somehow), put together five factoids on our opponents for you.
- 1. A nice short away-trip for us on the last Saturday before Christmas, then!
Indeed so. If the fixtures-computer had to send us on the road so near to the festive season, it could not, in fairness, have been kinder. The Tameside Stadium, at four M60 junctions and under 10 miles away, represents our shortest jaunt of the season – excepting, of course, last month’s hop, skip and a jump to Cheadle Town in the Cheshire Senior Cup!
- 2. So, ‘Curzon’ Ashton – the only football team to be named after a cinema chain, right?
Not so, I am afraid, movie buffs. The Ashton-under-Lyne club came about in 1963 (initially as Curzon Amateurs) following a merger of two local teams – Ashton Amateurs and Curzon Road Methodists – with the street in question taking its designation from the First Viscount Curzon (1730-1820), whose first name, rather spookily, was Assheton!
And, before you ask, the quirky ‘Nash’ nickname is not used by way of some peculiar pop homage to Kate (ask your dad) or Johnny (ask your grandad). It harks back to a third team from the town, Ashton National (so called because of the nearby National Gas and Engine Oil Company), who folded in 1940 but whose Katherine Street ground was Curzon Ashton’s home before the current one was opened, just under a mile up Richmond Street, in 2005.
- 3. I guess, given the proximity, that a good few have played for both County and Curzon?
Well, we have a couple of ex-Nashers on our books now, of course – with Sam Walker and Matty Warburton both having arrived in SK3 this summer. Connor Hampson, who has just left us for Altrincham, joined the Hatters from Curzon during February 2017. And former Hatters Richie Baker (at County during 2014/15) and Paul Marshall (2013) have in recent months taken their places in our hosts’ midfield from FC United and Alfreton Town, respectively.
Going back a little further in time: sharp-shooting striker Kristian Dennis (2013-15) made the short trip down to Edgeley Park after netting 61 times in 72 games for Curzon; goalkeeper Eric Nixon (1997-99) began his career in OL7; defender Tom Eckersley (2012/13), who by coincidence is now at Ashton United, turned out for the town’s other club on a handful of occasions three seasons ago; and defender Danny Hall (2011), midfielders Paul Ennis (2008/09) and Iain Howard (2013/14), as well as former County Youth player, and, until recently, FC United manager, Karl Marginson, have all subsequently plied their trade with the Nash. Last but not least, Curzon boss John
Flanagan, now in his seventh season at the Tameside Stadium helm, was on the EP books for County Reserves in his playing days.
- 4. Just 48 hours after the Shortest Day – so much of Saturday’s play will be under the lights!
It will – and Curzon and its forerunners have a couple of claims to fame when it comes to floodlight history. The original ‘Nash’, Ashton National, hosted at Katherine Street what was
possibly the UK’s first properly floodlit match in 1932. The exhibition game against Hyde went ahead at a time when the Football Association was sniffily forbidding its member clubs to light up, and before the powers-that-were at the FA eventually relented following World War Two.
In later years, the Hatters played a floodlit role at Katherine Street, when they sent a side there to help celebrate the current club’s opening of a new set of lights after the end of the 1977/78 season. Curzon that evening fielded a 39-year-old Bobby Charlton – who, despite having stepped down from top-flight football five years earlier, still managed to nab a goal for the hosts. Charlton, incidentally, was no stranger to providing his services for friendly causes back in those playing-twilight days of his – having earlier also guested for County in the mid-70s.
- 5. And it’s an early opportunity for County to achieve a first ‘double’ of the season!
Or even a ‘treble’, given that we knocked Saturday’s opponents out of the FA Cup at EP five weeks or so after winning our home league match. Let us hope that County can continue an unbeaten record, home and away, against our hosts and leave them… erm, curzon’ and nashin’!
