National League North champions elect, Curzon, went ahead with three clinical strikes, but Celtic had their chances.

The opening goal for the visitors showed a different class, as Michael Afuye cut inside after bringing down a switched ball, he sold Kyle Brownhill a dummy with an aborted shot, Brownhill off balance gave Afuye the yard he needed to curl his shot beyond Charlie Monks’s fingertips. Celtic came back strong, with Jack Tinning heading a corner wide, and a thunderous twenty-yard shot from Liam Tongue seen late by Josh Ollerenshaw, but the Curzon keeper made a great stop with his legs. It looked the Celtic pressure told when Greg Wilkinson’s ingenious lifted ball into the path of Duckworth saw him smash the ball past Ollerenshaw, only to be shown a mystifying offside. Both Tongue and Wilkinson fired over the bar in half-chances, before Afuye again cut inside on a long ball, three defenders committed to stop him repeating his goal. Instead, he squared to Ben Darby who used Wilkinson to blindside Monks and grab Curzon’s second. Monks kept Celtic in with a shout with a late save in the first half stoppage from Oliver Kvarternik’s header.

Duckworth went agonisingly close right from the off in the second half. Such was the pressure from Celtic that Curzon swapped in three of their big guns. Even so, a beauty of a cross from Jordan Butterworth missed the queue of three waiting in the box as each threw themselves at the whipped in ball, missing by inches each. Jordan Burton nodded wide, Lewis Rawsthorn over and Max Leonard hit the upright with his curled shot. Another sub, Isaac Buckley-Ricketts added to the fire power, and it was his through ball that put Stefan Mols through to beat Monks with an placed shot.

Finally, Duckworth got one back for Celtic, though in stoppage time. A half-cleared corner came to him, and he fired through the crowd, Wilkinson opening his legs to let the ball go through. Charlie Bigley threaded the ball through for Afuye to chase, he got in the box, only for Burton to catch him, and concede a penalty for Mols to bring the visitors tally up to four.