I saw my dad the other day. We lost him three-and-a-half years ago yet there he was, looking back at me. I suppose we all get to an age in life when we resemble our parents that little bit more – and, when I looked at the photograph of myself and my daughter, taken by my wife, it hit me like never before.
That’s him, I thought. He’s me. It was both unnerving and delightful, disarming and lovely, strange and absolutely normal.
Sometimes I can’t bring myself to look at that photo. Sometimes it’s all I can do.
When we lose someone, we typically worry about getting rid of things. Each old possession we take to the charity shop or bung on Facebook Marketplace, no matter how trivial, makes us fear we’re giving something away for good.
The guilt takes some shedding. Yet, as time passes, it’s overpowered by the things you can’t throw out or sell: the memories, the little sounds that stay in your ears, the glancing reflections you see, the jokes and quips you remember.
If anything, they become more vivid when there is less clutter. They are free to take centre stage. And this, after all, is the best way to remember someone: with thoughts, rather than things.
You might think this a strange way to get round to the subject of this article, which is a 1990s footballer with long hair, a moustache and a mixed attitude to tracking back. The fact is, though, that no player makes me think about my dad more than David Currie.
Not in appearance – dad was never a mullet man – but in where the thought takes me. It puts me on the Paddock, with dad next to me; in the car on the way home from Brunton Park; on the phone, years later, talking about football days past.
In all the Carlisle teams we watched together, from the late eighties to early noughties, Currie was his favourite player, the one he spoke about most, both at the time and long afterwards, when we were discussing the Blues and making the comparisons that all supporters do.
The minute our chat became remotely nostalgic, I knew his name would come up. The sound of him saying it remains crystal clear – “Currie”, in his gentle west Cumbrian accent; the shortened u, the rolled rs, always with a warm, admiring tone.
I can also hear some of the other words he used alongside his name, like “craft”. Currie was not a blood-and-thunder player, one who could win easy approval with a crashing tackle or blunderbuss shot.
Dad wasn’t averse to that, but he preferred craft. He enjoyed those elusive little moments of class you didn't always get watching lower-league football.
He loved the way Currie could turn and thread a pass. He loved how he could spot a run. “Currie made Reeves,” he sometimes said, which I thought was a little harsh on Carlisle’s No9 in that great 1994/5 team.
But I knew what he meant. And I suspect David Reeves would too.
The pair of them were magnificent that season. As a Carlisle fan of only a few years, it was the first Blues side I had known as truly successful.
As such, when I play the old film reel in the mind, and see Reevesy running to the corner flag, arm whirring in celebration of his umpteenth goal, it sometimes makes me want to cry. It puts me back with Dad. "They're our team..." And it makes me think of how he would talk about the pass that set the goal up, too.
All this is 27 years gone, but it’s amazing how intense these feelings can still be. Currie turned 60 on Sunday, which feels like a suitable milestone to put these strange old ramblings out there.
I can’t imagine how an unassuming, ageing footballer would feel about it, but I bet there are zillions of other former players who, without meaning to, manage to unlock things in people in a lasting way.
Currie, more than most, appeared to vanish off the stage after retirement. For many years, any time I spoke to a Carlisle player from that period, it was a running joke that, while many of them remained in close contact, nobody ever really knew what “Raver” was up to.
That made it more special when, last year, he was finally located and persuaded to attend the 1994/5 reunion at Harraby Catholic Club. Towards the end of a night of achingly happy reminiscence, I introduced myself, muttered a few things about him being my dad’s favourite, and later gave him a lift to Botchergate with some of the other nineties lads.
All I wanted to do, when driving home afterwards, was to send my dad the photo Barbara Abbott had kindly taken of Currie and me. All I wanted was to tell him I’d met David Currie, given him a lift, and that he’d promised to give me an interview (something dad always hoped for).
If that does happen one day, I know it won’t end up a balanced article. Well, to hell with that – sometimes football isn’t about cold journalistic detachment. Sometimes it’s about who you love and how you feel.
And of course we remember our heroes as better than they were. Naturally we discard the junk and cling onto the jewels. As such, I mainly picture Currie curling perfect crosses onto Dean Walling’s head. I see him scoring that goal against Rochdale (it wasn’t wind-assisted, silly; the wind was Currie-assisted).
I see him playing small, subtle parts in other goals; a glancing pass against Barnet to set Rod Thomas away to supply Reeves; little dabs of the brush on the canvas.
“Craft…”
It feels silly, even a bit embarrassing, to be rambling on like this about a bloody sportsman when we have so many deeper and more important memories. Sometimes, when thinking of this daft old game, it feels like perspective has disappeared long into the far distance, never to return.
But then…it’s not silly, either. You feel what you feel, you share what you share, you love what you love, and while I sometimes joke on Twitter that David Currie is the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time), I mean it, too.
The older I get, in fact, the more I think it. No other footballer, after all, lets me still hear my dad, over and over again, as often as I like.
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