Jamie Cureton

Jamie Cureton (born 28 August 1975) is an English semi-professional footballer who plays as a striker for Eastern Counties League Division One North club Kings Park Rangers. He began his career at Norwich City in 1994, and after the club's relegation from the Premier League, spent 21 seasons competing in The Football League, as well as one season at South Korean side Busan I'Cons in 2003. Subsequently, he has continued his career with several non-league clubs, including periods as a player-coach and player-manager.

One of the only eight English outfield footballers to have made over 1,000 competitive appearances, his career has spanned ten tiers of the football pyramid from the Premier League to the Eastern Counties Division One North, and has seen him score over 350 goals. He is the only player to have scored in the top 10 divisions of the English football pyramid.

Cureton's longest associations have been with Norwich City (five seasons), Bristol Rovers and Enfield (four seasons each). His 2022–23 Essex Senior Football League title with Enfield, as player-manager, is his only club trophy, though he has been part of five promotions and won the 2006–07 Football League Championship Golden Boot.

Born in Bristol, Cureton began his professional career with Norwich City, before moving on to Bristol Rovers. In 1993, he turned down an offer from Manchester United to stay at Carrow Road. An England youth international, he achieved significant status with the Norwich fans when he dyed his hair yellow and green for an East Anglian Derby game against Ipswich Town in 1996 and subsequently scoring in the same fixture. He was sold by Mike Walker to Bristol Rovers in 1996.

Cureton enjoyed a prolific spell at his hometown club. This was particularly the case during the 1999–2000 season where he struck up a partnership with Jason Roberts that almost took the club to promotion. After the club dipped out of the play-off places on the final day of the season he decided his future lay with pastures new, and headed to Reading.

Cureton moved to Reading in 2000, playing there for three years. While at the club, the Reading supporters' trust had a newly discovered star in the "Perseus" constellation named after him. Here he struck a formidable partnership with Martin Butler, becoming one of the most feared combinations in the Football League. In his first season (2000–01), he scored 30 goals, including a goal in the play-off final against Walsall, a game which Reading went on to lose 3–2. The following season however, it was Cureton who scored the goal to get Reading promoted. He scored the equaliser against Brentford in the closing stages, with a deft flick to help it over the keeper, into the corner of the net.

Cureton then made a mid-2003 switch to K League side Busan I'Cons (now Busan IPark), playing under former Chelsea manager Ian Porterfield. He failed to settle in East Asia however, describing the move as "another big mistake" in 2014. Cureton's time playing in South Korea is documented in the book, Who Ate All the Squid?: Football Adventures in South Korea.

After being released from his contract at Busan, he returned to England and joined Queens Park Rangers on 30 January 2004. One of the more memorable of the six goals he scored there was a volley from a tight angle against Coventry City which echoed Marco Van Basten's goal against USSR in the Euro 1988 final. After a mostly unsettled season at Loftus Road though, he joined Swindon Town in June 2005.