When Salford City captain Curtis Tilt was 20, a career in football wasn't at the back of his mind - it wasn't even in his mind. Tilt had stopped playing Sunday League when he was 16 and had since started working in a quarry, using JCBs to haul tonnes of sand around before sending it on its way.

At lunch, Tilt would head to the fast food van that pulled up at the side of the site and gorge on sausage rolls or pies. As he admitted on the eve of Salford City's trip to the Etihad and an FA Cup third-round date with Manchester City today, when he put the boots away at 16, he never thought they would come back out.

It is the beauty of the FA Cup's early rounds that it can throw up stories of such romance and intrigue, and the fact Tilt, now 33, will be tasked with trying to stop Erling Haaland, destined for a career at the top of the game from almost the moment he was born, is a classic cup fairytale.

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The Walsall-born defender's lucky break arrived after a couple of years in the quarry when his best mate Tom Tonks called him one weekend (for added cup romance, Tonks now plays Tamworth and has his own date with destiny on Sunday, when they face Tottenham, a game Tilt will be attending).

"I was asking him what he was doing, he said, 'Oh, I'm staying in, I'm playing in a tournament, like a local tournament', and I just said to him, can you get me a game there? It's incredible," said Tilt.

"I went there. There was about 20 players, and I was just like, well, what am I doing, cause I obviously ain't going to play. And then the manager came up to me and said: Can you play at centre-half?"

So far, so normal, until you consider Tilt had never played centre-half in his life. Up until 16 he had been a striker, then for four years he had been working full-time, barely giving football a thought. With just his mum at home, he had wanted to work during the week and at weekends to support her, so the game took a backseat.

"Just to get on the pitch I said yeah I can play centre-half," he said. "I just winged it there, honestly."

It was Tilt's lucky day. He impressed at the back and Ian Rowe, manager of Gornal Athletic, who played six tiers below the EFL, invited him in for pre-season.

"I was so unfit it was untrue, sick through all the whole preseason, didn't like it one bit," he said. "I've always been the sort of person if I do come up against someone, I always make like a battle between me and them. I don't like to lose in anything and it just came natural to me. It was just little positioning bits that I had to pick up on the way."

Tilt started to play regularly and climb the ladder in the West Midlands, moving to Tipton Town, Halesowen Town, Hednesford Town and AFC Telford. All the while, he continued to work in the quarry, and he liked it. In fact, he liked it so much he's considering returning when his playing career ends.

"When I left school, it was just my mum at home, so I had to go out and work, really," he said. "To play football and work was not really something that I wanted to do. I needed to work weekends as well as in the week.

"So I worked on a quarry, and it's basically it's just machinery, JCBs, Komatsu, 40,50 tonne machinery, and it was just digging out sand and putting it through a machine so there are no lumps in and just sending it on its way.

"I thought that was me. I thought that was my career path. Like I said, I was unfit when I went to Gornal. There used to be a van pulling up on the side and I used to just eat pies, sausage rolls.

"My diet was horrendous and you just like get what you can and carry on working. I thought once I finished football at 16, I didn't think I was going to play another game to be honest."

Tilt's big break arrived when he signed for Wrexham in the Conference in 2016/17, in what was considered full-time football at the time. Finally, his days in the quarry were over. After a year at Wrexham, Tilt entered the EFL with Blackpool under Gary Bowyer. He has risen as high as the Championship with Wigan and is now a full Jamaica international.

He has been at Salford since the start of last season and is now captain as they target promotion to League One, but for now, all eyes are on the Etihad and a dream FA Cup third-round debut. It is a game laced with narrative, with the club owned by the Class of 92, the cohort of Manchester United legends guaranteed a reception as frosty as the weather.

Ryan Giggs is now Salford's director of football and a regular on the training pitches and in the dugout, while Paul Scholes is also hands-on with his involvement.

"We watched Scholes train with us one day, and he never gave the ball away once," said Tilt. "It's like he could just still play and it's just crazy how their mind thinks and how incredible they still are after 20 years of not playing professionally.

"I think it was a possession game. Some of the lads was firing it into him trying to make him to make a mistake but he just didn't."

Tilt will be relishing the prospect of a battle with Haaland on Saturday, but his dream weekend will involve two upsets, with his mate Tonks, a friend since primary school, getting the better of Tottenham as well.

"He can't wait, he loves football, his whole family breathe football, they always have done," he said. "He just can't believe that he's got Tottenham.

"He works incredibly hard on and off the pitch with daily work as well as playing football and like I say, his game's on Sunday, so he's going to watch mine and I'm going to watch his, so hopefully we can both cause massive upsets."