Remembering the 'buccaneering' striker behind a Derby County revival
The latest instalment of Anton Rippon's nostalgia column looks back on Bill Curry's impact at the Rams
Anton Rippon
Jack Parry (left) and Ray Young watch Dave Hickson get in a header at Anfield in October 1960. The Rams lost 1-0 in what was Bill Curry's debut for them.
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The 1960-61 season looked like bringing better days for Derby County fans. After finishing 18th in the Second Division the previous season, the Rams began the new campaign with a 4-1 win over Brighton and Hove Albion at the Baseball Ground.
Yet, after avoiding relegation by only five points the previous season, the Rams then collected only nine points from their first 12 games. New blood was needed.
Former England under-23 centre-forward Bill Curry had scored the Seagulls' goal at Derby on the opening day. Six weeks later, Curry was a Rams player. Derby manager Harry Storer paid £12,000 – the Rams' biggest outgoing transfer fee of recent years – and Curry repaid that with 19 League goals in his first season to become a great favourite with Rams fans. Every club's supporters needs a hero to cheer – and for the Rams' beleaguered followers, Curry was that hero.
The Newcastle-born striker had begun his career with Newcastle United juniors before signing full-time professional forms in October 1953. He was transferred to Brighton in July 1959, and fans at the Goldstone Ground were sorry to see him leave.
Bill Curry, who lit up a modest time in Derby County's history
Curry made his Rams debut at Liverpool on October 1, 1960, when a Johnny Wheeler goal in the 67th minute proved to be the only one of the game. The following week the Rams lost again, this time at Swansea Town where Ian Hall scored in a 2-1 defeat.
Luton Town, who included John Groves, son of a pre-war Derby player, Arthur Groves. arrived at the Baseball Ground on October 15.
It was on his home debut that Bill Curry was to make his mark and win for himself undying affection from Derby fans. In only the eighth minute the Rams' new star headed his team in front after a cross from Barrowcliffe. In the Derby Telegraph, Wilf Shaw reported: "Curry's feat was all the more remarkable because of the extremely difficult angle from which he scored."
Five minutes into the second half, full-back Geoff Barrowcliffe made it 2-0 from the penalty spot after Tommy Powell had been brought down in the area.
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Eight minutes later Alec Ashworth, making his debut for the Hatters, pulled back a goal, but with ten minutes remaining Barry Hutchinson, a close season signing from Chesterfield and, like Curry making his home debut for the Rams, restored Derby's two-goal lead. With two minutes left, Curry made it 4-1 with another header, again from a long ball by Barrowcliffe.
"The Rams found their bite and lost none of their skill," ran the Derby Telegraph headline. It was a huge relief, Derby's first win in nine League games.
The following Saturday, the Rams travelled to Lincoln City, even at that early stage of the season a team struggling to avoid relegation. Twelve months earlier, the Rams had lost 6-2 at Lincoln and, again, their defence suffered an off-day at Sincil Bank. On this occasion, however, they had Bill Curry to give them a head start.
It took Curry only 12 minutes to put Derby ahead, when he ran on to a neat pass from Hutchinson. In the 27th minute, Curry made it 2-0 after excellent build-up play from Powell and Hall.
This time it appeared that the Rams would win in a canter, but 11 minutes into the second half, Barrowcliffe handled, and Bert Linnecor beat Terry Adlington – a great uncle of swimming star Rebecca Adlington, by the way – from the penalty spot.
Fourteen minutes from time, however, Curry restored the Rams' two-goal lead to complete the first hat-trick by a Derby player since Jack Parry's three goals against Grimsby Town in February 1959.
On 80 minutes, the game seemed well beyond Lincoln's grasp when Hutchinson mishit his shot and Hall pounced on the loose ball to score an opportunist goal.
One minute later, Linnecor made it 4-2 after a quickly taken free-kick, and three minutes from time, a remarkable comeback seemed possible when Fred Middleton beat Adlington with a long-range effort, but the Rams held on.
In the Derby Telegraph, Wilf Shaw reported: "I can't pay too high a tribute to Curry. Undoubtedly he is the man behind the Rams revival … What a difference it has made to the Rams attack to have a centre-forward who can score goals … He led the line with a lot of intelligence, lacked nothing for pace, and emphasised that he must be one of the gamest players in modern football … Curry shrugs off knocks as part and parcel of the game …"
Strangely, that was not a view shared by some of his teammates, who felt that Curry often "bottled it" when the going got tough in away games.
Supporters who remember his buccaneering style will hear none of it. They may point out that in his first season alone, of his 19 goals he scored one more on away grounds than he did at home.
At the end of the season, Lincoln went down, bottom of the table. Derby, meanwhile, finished 12th which was a big improvement on the previous campaign.
Altogether Bill Curry scored 76 goals – including two more hat-tricks – in 164 League and Cup games for Derby County before being transferred to Mansfield Town in February 1965. For the Stags he scored 53 goals in 102 League games before ending his career with a few appearances for Chesterfield and doing the rounds in non-League football in the East Midlands.
Including his days at Newcastle and Brighton, Curry netted 178 goals in 394 League games, not bad for a player who apparently did not fancy playing away from home. The statistics certainly suggest that he was always ready for the battle. Alas, he lost his last fight, against cancer, in August 1960, at the age of only 54.
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