Salford captain Curtis Tilt once thought he would spend his working life operating heavy equipment – now his next job is to stop Manchester City goal machine Erling Haaland.
The 33-year-old defender will lead his team out for one of the biggest games of his career as the League Two outfit head to the nearby Etihad Stadium in the FA Cup third round on Saturday.
It is a far cry from his early working days at a quarry in the midlands, controlling 50-tonne excavators and eating pies every day.
Walsall-born Tilt said: “When I left school, it was just my mum at home so I had to go out and work really.
“Playing football and working was not really something that I wanted to do – and I needed to work weekends as well as in the week.
“So I worked on a quarry, basically just machinery, JCBs, Komatsus – 40 tonne, 50 tonne. It was just digging out sand and putting it through a machine so there’s no lumps in and just sending it on its way.
“I did that for years. I enjoyed working on the diggers and it’s something that I’d probably do when I leave football because I just enjoyed it.
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“But I was unfit. There used to be a van pulling up on the side and I used to just eat pies, sausage rolls. My diet was horrendous.
“I thought once I finished football at 16, I didn’t think I was going to play another game to be honest.”
Tilt’s career path changed when his friend Tom Tonks – who coincidentally will be playing against Tottenham with non-League Tamworth this weekend – took him along to a tournament he was playing in.
Tilt said: “I just said to him, ‘Can you get me a game?’ So I went, but there were about 20 players there.
“I thought, ‘Well, what am I doing, cause I obviously ain’t gonna play?’. But then the manager came up to me and said, ‘Can you play at centre-half’?
“When I was younger, I’d played from 11-16 as a striker in Sunday league football, but I just winged it.”
From there he was spotted by Gornal Athletic and a series of moves through the non-League ranks followed, with stops including Wrexham before stepping into the EFL, at the age of 25, with Blackpool in 2017.
He has since played for Rotherham and Wigan – and represented Jamaica – before he joined ambitious Salford in 2023.
The Ammies have enjoyed their own rise through the amateur and part-time divisions since being taken over by a group of players from Manchester United’s famous ‘Class of 92’ a decade ago.
Now after five years in League Two, they are pushing for promotion and are third in the table, fuelling optimism ahead of their glamour tie at City.
Tilt said: “Everyone’s been buzzing around the training ground for the last two to three days and we just can’t wait to test ourselves against the best.
“Our form’s been very good. We’ve won six (in a row) with six clean sheets, so all the lads are on a high. We’ll go there and see if we can cause an upset.”
He accepts the challenge is not straightforward, however, not least with the prolific Haaland needing to be controlled.
“I think many have tried, many have failed,” he added. “I’ll just try and do what I can footballing-wise to stop him.”
