‘We were 3-0 up minutes from FA Cup third round – our dream died in 162 seconds’

It's an hour into the game and I am in the club office, gathering the official attendance figures for the police.

In there, sat alone at his desk in his club shirt and tie, is Harry Twamley. He is counting the cash and piles of coins that the club has brought in earlier in the day. He might be Mr Curzon Ashton, but he can't bring himself to watch.

It is not unusual for Harry to zone out of matches. He has been known to hide in a corner of Non-League grounds when Curzon have a penalty, too nervous to watch. But such were the stakes in the FA Cup second round, he locked himself in the office for the entire game.

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Harry is a softly spoken man, but one who has seen it all. He was one of the founders of Curzon Ashton Football Club way back in 1963. But this game against AFC Wimbledon was as seismic as they come; the biggest game in the Nash's history. We were live on BT Sport, thousands were in attendance and we were just 90 minutes away from the potential of facing a Premier League side.

And it was going bloody well.

We were 2-0 up, thanks to a brace from a former Liverpool academy graduate called Adam Morgan, who was reviving his career with a goal-gluten spell in non-league.

There is a roar from outside and I run from the office to find out what has happened. I see delirium. People with their heads in their hands, husbands and wives hugging, youth team players screaming. Adam had just completed his hat-trick.

I sprint back to the office. "Harry, it's 3-0! It's 3-0," I cry. "FA Cup third round, we're almost there!"

I'll never forget his response. Without even the slightest hint of emotion, he said: "It's not over yet." He went back to counting his coins.

Harry is a wise man and I wish I had heeded his warning, because what would follow will give me and everyone involved with Curzon Ashton that day nightmares for the rest of our lives.

My involvement with Curzon came through my dad, John Flanagan. He was manager, had been for a number of years and had overseen the most successful period in the club's history. Back-to-back promotions had Curzon playing in the National League North for the first time ever.

But one thing had always eked away at my dad: he had never managed in the proper rounds of the FA Cup. This year, the 2016/17 season, it all changed. A fairytale final qualifying round tie against York City saw Curzon into the first round. We drew Westfield FC – one of the lowest-ranked teams ever to make the first round proper – and nervously edged into the second round via a replay.

This time, we got our dream draw: Wimbledon at home. Former winners (yes, they were given their history back after the MK debacle), and a live tie on BT Sport. I would spend two weeks prior to the game working at Curzon organising tickets and logistics. Everyone linked to the club pulled together, as all clubs do for an occasion like this, to make it work.

My dad had been to watch Wimbledon. He saw them thump Bury – also then a League One side – 5-0 in something that looked to be an ominous warning of what was to come. Well, a warning for everyone but one person.

My dad recalls: "I came away quietly optimistic, but I'm not sure if that was me being a bit nervous, or whether it was me being realistic. I think I was being realistic. The way things came to fruition, I think my thinking was right. I thought I saw enough places where we could gain an advantage. I always felt that we were always going to need all the luck that we could possibly muster, but I think if things went our way, we had enough about us as a group of lads to cause an upset."

So comes the morning of the game. Sunday, 4th December, 2016. It was baltic. Curzon had hired frost covers to ensure the game wouldn't be called off and there was a numbing wind passing through the ground. There was an issue with one goalmouth. It had held water and was sure to make it difficult for goalkeepers in that six-yard box. But the game was good to go ahead.

"I think you go 'we need to be at our game here' when you go into FA Cup games," recalls Neal Ardley, the then-Wimbledon manager. "If you don't match the motivation of the underdog, it is going to be a really tough day. I felt that day had enough about it. It was on TV, the wind was strong, I knew Curzon were a decent team from what I had seen, so I knew we had to be at it."

FA Cup games, particularly in the first and second rounds, tend to have narratives and sub-plots. It's why the magic of the competition has survived over 150 years. It was no different for Curzon on that day. Calling the action for BT Sport was Adam Summerton, who is now a regular on TNT's coverage of worldwide football.

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"It is a lovely little ground at Curzon, we got a lovely welcome." Summerton says, remembering the fixture. "We were taken into a room and they were serving cooked breakfasts and stuff. It had a real feeling of an early round FA Cup game with an upset on the cards.

"Always with games like that, you are looking for the storyline. It is about the human interest side of it too. It's about the contrasts and the individual stories of players who perhaps have fallen on hard times, usually through injuries or something like that and they are trying to work their way back.

"It felt like there were lots of little sub-plots to it and one of the main ones was Adam Morgan – and it turned out that he really did take centre stage."

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Morgan was once tipped for the very top of the game after breaking through Liverpool's academy. He even partnered Luis Suarez up front at Anfield for a match in the Europa League. But then-Reds boss Brendan Rodgers made the decision to cut him from the squad and Morgan was forced to find football elsewhere.

He moved to Yeovil Town – then in the Championship – and was one of the highest-paid players in their history. However, he never saw eye-to-eye with their management and his love for football was slowly seeped out of him. There was a brief move to Accrington Stanley and then a couple of non-league clubs, but mentally, he was not in a good place.

Looking to help out his friend, Curzon midfielder Luke Clark – who played alongside Morgan in England youth international set-ups – dragged him down to Curzon to train with him. A short-term deal was signed and Morgan, now with an arm around his shoulder, was firing once again.

“Everyone at Curzon has been great,” Morgan was quoted as saying before the game. “They’ve took the pressure off me. Normally, when I’ve gone somewhere there’s been a win-at-all-costs mentality, but that’s not the case there. We play with freedom and I’ve been given a licence to express myself. The manager’s told me to go out and do what I do best, which is score goals.”

Against Wimbledon, it didn't take him long. It was a piece of individual brilliance. He picked up the ball around 35 yards from goal, looked up and had a pop. It was one of the goals of his life. It was one of the goals of Curzon Ashton's history. And it was barely 30 seconds into the game.

I was stood behind the far goal when it went in. Swathes of Curzon fans, their families and day-tripping glory hunters were left in disbelief. It was a dream start that nobody other than Morgan himself could have predicted.

But had that troublesome goalmouth played a role? "If I look at the video, I am sure the keeper's footing goes," my dad says as he remembers the goal. It was all sand in there so when he tried to push off, he didn't get anywhere, so the ball was past him before he knew it.

"My reaction was that it would not make an ounce of difference on the game because it is so early. It was exciting for everybody and created a bit of noise but I always thought it was irrelevant because it was too early.

"My thoughts were whether it would affect our players by getting behind the ball and going deeper and deeper when it was always my intention to go out and be disciplined and get down the sides of them, because I felt like they had weaknesses in the full-back areas. I felt we had the legs in there down the sides to create a problem."

Those legs down the flanks certainly played a role in the second goal, which came after just 21 minutes. A powerful run down the left side saw the ball lifted into the box towards Morgan, who bundled the ball home. It was 2-0, Curzon were in dreamland, and their momentum took them to half-time.

But one team's dream is another team's nightmare. Being a League One side, Wimbledon were also rarely on TV – and they were facing an embarrassing result in front of hundreds of thousands watching at home.

"There was a couple of things I said to them that half-time," Ardley recalls of his half-time team talk to his depleted Wimbledon players. "I remember it vividly. I felt like there was a bit of anxiety in the group and if I had ripped into them, I think I'd have made it worse.

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"I did two things. I challenged them rather than ripped into them and said to them 'at the moment, you're seeing this as a nightmare situation, wondering what people are going to say being 2-0 down and it being a terrible result, rather than thinking how good this will be when we turn it round'.

"The second thing was I said to them, with the wind now, they will tire and I honestly believe that going into the final 15-20 minutes, you have it in you to score three or four goals. I left them with that because I thought if we didn't score early in the second half, that we needed to still have that belief late on in the half."

But this was one FA Cup tie that didn't follow any script. Curzon didn't look like they were tiring and as I was in the club office speaking to Harry Twamley, the roar went up as Morgan completed his hat-trick. It was a high that Curzon's small loyal support never thought they would ever experience. It was redemption for Morgan on live TV. It meant Curzon Ashton were on the cusp of a potential clash with Premier League juggernauts such as Manchester City, Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal.

But I guess that's the thing with once-in-a-lifetime experiences. You don't necessarily know how to deal with them.

As Curzon looked to hold on to what they had built, for the first time that day, Wimbledon sensed an opportunity. Perhaps Neal Ardley's half-time words were resonating with his players. Despite being 3-0 up, Curzon began soaking up pressure.

"They were really starting to knock on the door," Adam Summerton recalls from his commentary position. "I think there were a few pretty good saves, last-ditch defending sorts of situations just before that. You remember thinking – and I think I actually said in the commentary – if they get one here, it will be a very interesting end to the game."

My dad remembers: "I think it was a possible case of inexperience on my part because I had never been into that stage of the FA Cup and played a league team, I think we needed to just adapt our tactics and change the team around slightly to absorb a bit of pressure.

"One of the biggest things I noticed on the day was that I found it very difficult to communicate with the lads on the day. At a normal league game, I can shout and the left-back could be at the other side of the pitch and hear me and I could get a message to them. I couldn't do that against Wimbledon because of the size of the crowd."

The pressure continued but Curzon had little on the bench by way of defensive reinforcements. Ahead of the game, my dad had opted to leave a centre-back out of the squad, in favour of fully-attacking line-up of substitutes.

"I never expected us to be 3-0 up, so I packed the bench for us chasing a game. I was looking at that bench and thinking I am going to need people who are able to create something.

"Before the game, everybody would have put their money on Wimbledon to beat us. My thoughts were that when it got late in the game, we would likely end up 1-0 behind, or 2-1 behind or something like that, and we needed to have something to offer on the bench. We were more likely to be chasing the game than be protecting it. So I did that thinking we had cover on the pitch and not the other way round. As it happened, I needed defenders on the bench."

The pressure continued, and then as the game ticked into the 80th minute, it happened. It happened in barely the blink of an eye.

Wimbledon scored. Then they scored again. And then again.

It went from 3-0 to 3-3 in just 162 seconds.

"They went into the game with nothing to lose, then once they conceded one, it felt like suddenly they had everything to lose," recalls Summerton.

"The whole mentality of the game changed. It almost felt like Wimbledon would score every single time they went forward from that point. They didn't literally score every time they went forward… but it was not far off.

"Even though it was 3-3, I still thought they will get a replay out of this and everyone will be happy, because Wimbledon had got away with one and Curzon will make a bit of money from a replay. You're thinking they'll see it out, surely they can't lose having being 3-0 up."

But Curzon did lose it. A 94th minute header looped over the goalkeeper and sent the 450-strong travelling support into raptures. The rest of the ground dropped to their knees.

The trio of quick goals to level the game were a sucker punch, but the winner was the nail in the coffin. There wasn't a person with a link to Curzon who didn't looked like they had seen a ghost.

My dad still hurts to this day. Not many people have a day in lights that pans out quite as spectacularly as that. It has been five years since he left Curzon, but even now, every time it gets brought up in conversation, you can see the pain in his face.

"It was a feeling that I had never experienced before," he tells me. "It was a hollowness, an emptiness that I didn't realise existed. We weren't just marginally ahead, we were convincingly ahead and I think we warranted it at the time.

"It's like trying to describe something indescribable. It was a feeling I had never felt before and had it for days and days afterwards. I still get it now when I think about it. It's in my stomach where I feel it, not in my head.

"I suppose it's like winning the lottery and someone nicking the ticket off you before you cash it in.

"I've never thought of it like this before. Because my disappointment was so massive, which I still have to this day and this minute, I just think I could have done much better personally.

"But I think if I got in the same situation again, I think I'd personally as a manager perform better. I think I would do a better job, because I'd know what to expect. It's weird when you get caught up on it."

In the other dugout was elation. Ardley says: "From the players' point of view, there was an element of relief and joy. Joy because they have achieved something pretty special in their character and in their mentality. After putting themselves in that situation, they found out a lot about themselves in that last 20 minutes.

"From my point of view, I had mixed emotions. I was proud of the fact we came back and won the game, but I don't know if you can remember, when we got the winner, I didn't celebrate. I looked over to your dad and he was crestfallen with the amount of effort that they had put in and sank down.

"I took a moment to remember that football is cruel, because I have been at the end of moments similar and I didn't want to be disrespectful, because I thought Curzon and your dad had been pretty special up to that moment."

Adam Summerton was one of the few neutrals in the ground that day, but still could not believe what he had witnessed when the full-time whistle was blown and he was finally able to put his microphone down.

"You're just wide-eyed," he said. "I just get so emotionally invested in the game, even though I don't have a dog in the fight, I couldn't care less who wins any game that I commentate on. As a commentator, I love embracing the chaos of a situation like that. That is when I am enjoying it the most. When it is chaos on the pitch and you don't know what is going to happen next. Last-ditch challenges, goals going in, it's end-to-end, really open, it is just so much fun to commentate on.

"I think Neal Ardley said after the game, 'I feel sorry for Curzon Ashton', and we all felt that too. Even though you have no emotional investment at all, to be in that situation and not win… it would have been the greatest day in some of those players' careers.

"I remember seeing your dad after the game. I was either in the tunnel or by the dressing room and I remember seeing him walking round in some sort of daze. I wanted to say something to him but I didn't know what to say.

"There's almost no point in me saying anything in that situation, because nothing I say will make any shred of difference to how they are feeling right now. If I say bad luck, he'd probably say 'is that all you've got?' I just looked at him and thought, I feel so sorry for you. You saw it written all over his face."

Just over 24 hours had passed and while the pain was still real, there was one more reality that had to be faced. We had to find out who we would have taken on in the FA Cup third round if those fateful 162 seconds did not happen.

I was back in work and due for an evening shift on the Mirror Football online desk. I was asked to live blog the draw, but had to say no. In fact, I didn't see the outcome of the draw until the next day. I wasn't ready for the pain.

My dad, on the other hand, had spent his day in bed.

"I was in a place I had never been before. I had never felt like that ever," he says. "Then I thought, it got to five or six o'clock and I thought 'you're being soft, get off your arse, get out of bed and watch it'. If it comes out Arsenal, so what. If it comes out United, so what. I forced myself out of bed, went down, watched it.

"Truthfully, if it had come out City or United, I would have dropped to my knees and cried. You only ever get one chance of that.

"My recollection was it got down to about 12 or 14 balls left. A lot of the Premier League teams had come out but I think Southampton and Arsenal were still in there.

"I was thinking f***'s sake, please don't pull one of them out. And it came out… Sutton United… will play… AFC Wimbledon.

"I went: 'F***ING GET IN' with a huge fist pump.

"It really made the difference."

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