Craig Fleming
English footballer (born 1971)

Craig Fleming (born 6 October 1971) is an English former professional footballer who played as a defender.
Playing career
Fleming began his professional career with his hometown club Halifax Town (69 appearances, no goals) where he made his debut aged 16. He also picked up the Barclays Player of the Month award at the same age. In the summer of 1991 he moved to Oldham Athletic, where he made 192 appearances, scoring one goal. His spell at Oldham included three seasons in the top division in the early 1990s. In this period, Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson described Fleming as "the best man-to-man marker in the country" after playing some memorable games against a young Ryan Giggs. In 1993, he was involved in Oldham Athletic's great escape when they narrowly avoided relegation from the Premier League on goal difference. He became captain of the Latics in 1997 which was also the season when he left Boundary Park for Carrow Road, the home of Norwich City for a fee of £600,000. In his first season with the Canaries he suffered some injury setbacks but this was soon behind him and he became a first team regular for nearly ten seasons. In this time he also had spells of captaining his team and was a well-respected member of the squad.
The public source identifies “Craig Fleming” as english footballer (born 1971). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Craig, Fleming and English.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1138537. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1971, 1991, 1993 and 1997.
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This entry incorporates text from “Craig Fleming” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.