Curry: Robert (Bob)

WW2 Guest: 1943-1944 (Leeds United War-time Guest Player Details)

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Born: Gateshead: 02-11-1918

Debut: v Derby County (a): 18-03-1944

Height & Weight: Unknown

Curry started his football career with his hometown team of Gateshead in the Third Division North in the 1936-37 season. He did not make a first team appearance before signing for Second Division Sheffield Wednesday in September 1937. He only made one first team appearance with the Owls and that was in his first season of 1937-38, when he made his debut at Hillsborough in a 1-2 loss to Aston Villa on 18th September 1937. He guested for Leeds United in the 1943-44 Football League Northern Section (Second Championship) in a 2-2 draw at Derby County in which Curry scored both Leeds goals. He also guested five times for Bradford Park Avenue in 1939-40 and scored three goals. He played seven times for Sheffield Wednesday in 1940-41 and scored once but that was all the games he took part in for his employers during the war years. He had one game for Lincoln City in 1943-44 but did not score. He scored five times in thirteen games for Mansfield Town in the 1944-45 season and also played six times and scored once for Sheffield United in the same season and then scored five times in thirteen games for them in the 1944-45 season. He left Hillsborough for Non-League Gainsborough Trinity and then went into Non-League football with Colchester United, where he was a consistent scorer in their Southern League days. He signed for Colchester before the start of the 1946-47 season and made his debut for them, and scored, just a couple of months before his twenty-eighth birthday in the home match with Gloucester City on 31st August 1946 which they lost 2-3. He was the second on the goalscoring list in Southern League matches with fourteen, eight behind leading scorer Arthur Turner, as they finished eighth. 1947-48 saw them fourth with Curry scoring seventeen but still eight behind Arthur Turner. 1948-49 saw Colchester again fourth and runners-up in the Southern League Cup with Curry netting another seventeen goals, eleven behind Arthur Turner. In 1949-50 Colchester finished second on goal average to Merthyr Tydfil and won the Southern League Cup, beating Bath City 6-4 on aggregate in the two-legged final. Bob Curry scored twenty League goals, but was third on the list behind Vic Keeble, who had forty, and Fred Cutting with twenty-one. On June 3rd 1950 Gillingham, who polled forty-four votes, and Colchester, who polled twenty-eight, were elected to the Football League because of their support base while Merthyr Tydfil only polled one and missed out. In his association with Colchester from 1946-47 to 1949-50 Bob Curry had scored sixty-eight goals in one hundred and thirty-nine appearances in the Southern League, scored eight goals in ten F.A. Cup ties and fourteen goals in twenty-three Southern League Cup ties, a total of ninety goals in one hundred and seventy-two games. In the 1950-51 season in which Colchester played in the Football League Third Division South and Colchester's first-ever League game was against old Southern League foes Gillingham at Priestfield on 19th August 1950, when a crowd of 19,542 witnessed a 0-0 draw. Five days later Curry scored United's first-ever League goal in a 1-1 draw at Swindon Town. He top-scored with thirteen goals in thirty-two games in the League and scored twice in two F.A. Cup games, as Colchester finished sixteenth. He left Layer Road to become the Player-Manager of Clacton Town and later Halstead Town. He died in 2001.