WEMBLEY DREAM IS WITH YOU FOREVER
FORMER England captain Stuart Pearce knows all about fulfilling boyhood dreams and gracing the hallowed Wembley turf – and reckons Non-League Finals Day captures the emotions of both in one fell swoop! Pearce is one of Non-League football’s biggest success stories after starting his career in a five-year spell at local club Wealdstone and going on to become a legend on both the domestic and international stage. The Hammersmith-born left-back made the step up to the professional game when Coventry City somewhat surprisingly paid Wealdstone £30,000 for his services in 1983. Two years later, he was snapped up by Brian Clough at Nottingham Forest and the rest is history with Pearce spending 12 years at the City Ground before ‘Psycho’, as he was affectionately known, moved onto the likes of Newcastle United, West Ham and Manchester City. He also won 78 England caps. Amidst his unprecedented success, however, humble Pearce never forgot his roots and now works as a Non-League Ambassador for FA Trophy and FA Vase sponsors Isuzu, and also Pitching In, to lend his support to the level of the game that propelled his career. “I used to go an watch the Trophy final when I was a kid in the 70s,” Pearce, a former Trophy quarter-finalist, told The NLP. “I lived in the borough of Brent so Wembley was my local stadium. I remember going to watch Enfield play and various other teams, and it was a brilliant occasion then. “Wembley is such an iconic stadium. Just thinking of all the history that has gone there before is incredible enough but to actually get the opportunity to play on the same pitch that the likes of Bobby Charlton, Bobby Moore, it’s even more so. “I was fortunate to play there for my club as a professional and as an international player but as a Non-League player for five-and-a-half years, I never got that opportunity. I never got far enough to get to a major final in the Trophy. “I have, however, seen the whole spectrum of it and I know just how special it is for these football clubs. I was at the Vase and Trophy Finals last year and it’s a fantastic occasion, not only for the players, coaching staff and the manager, but for the supporters as well. “To have both finals on the same day I think has been a masterstroke. It’s an occasion everyone involved will remember for the rest of their lives.” So, what would it mean to Pearce if his former club progressed all the way to the FA Trophy final this time round. “It would be utopia,” ther 61-year-old added. “I left the club to go into the Football League in 1983 and in 1985 they got to the Trophy final and won the double. When I went back to Wealdstone the other day there were pictures dotted around the wall of that team. All those players I played alongside, it’s a special memory for me. I wasn’t there, I wasn’t a part of that team but I had a history with that team. “They were such special days, as they are for any team to get to a major Wembley final. It’s such a fantastic occasion.”