The next subject of our exclusive series of interviews with the men who have taken Tunbridge Wells to Saturday’s FA Carlsberg Vase Final at Wembley is Perry Spackman.

The goal scoring central defender whose extra time header at Shildon took Martin Larkin’s side into the weekend’s show piece under the Arch is the latest under the spotlight.

The man who’s goal took Wells to Wembley! Perry joked, “A nice title to have yes – but all joking it was nice to see one of the centre halves getting some credit in the paper.”

“As a back four we’ve played really well this year and its nice to see someone talking about us for once. I normally get on the end of most things and some people would say I miss most, but for some reason this year a few of them have gone in and a couple of them have really been important.”

A run like the one that Wells have achieved has its’ own built in pressures, but Perry admitted that that was completely untrue in the Semi Final. He told us, “The first Shildon game had no build up to it as everyone thought the game was going to be off and as a result the tension of it wasn’t really there. We then got thrown into it as I think they wound the referee up so much that he was just going to play it and then getting on with it so well.”

“Then the second game was probably the first time in the whole Vase run that we allowed ourselves to realise just how close we were to the Final – that we were ninety minutes away from Wembley. We’ve got a few young lads in our side and there are only a few of us who have been there and done it around the bigger games and so it was more keeping people calm rather than not knowing how to approach the game – getting there and the realisation that we were that close to Wembley was daunting for some of the younger kids.”

“And once we got the first half out of the way things came together! Then it goes all horribly wrong in the first twenty minutes and it was down to some of the experienced players like myself, (Joe) Fuller and Bourney (skipper Jason Bourne), got everyone together at half time and got things sorted out!”

Not even after the drama in the North East was Perry convinced that the dream had been achieved. “It hadn’t sunk in at all until I went to do the Media Day at Wembley, and even after the Media Day, I’m still not sure if it sunk in or not, and I don’t think it will sink in properly until the day itself when we start playing.”

“All the games we’ve had to play since the semi haven’t helped, but they’re in the same boat if not worse off, so we’ve just got to get on with it,” Perry said.

“With the weather and everything keep getting called off – travelling to games and getting them called off – we got all the way to Bath before one game was called off – and I think that the run has been so disjointed because of the weather and not knowing when the games are playing – we didn’t really have time to sit down and think about.”

“We’ve just ended up – and I know that this may sound cliched – but we’ve ended up in the Semi thinking “wow we’re 90 minutes from Wembley, and preparing to play in front of the biggest crowd most of us will ever play in front of.”

Perry like nearly all of his team mates was brought to the Culvenden by boss Martin Larkin, but what is Larkin really like to play for?

Perry let us into the world of “Larkin” when he said, “He keeps himself distant enough from us which is quite important at this level of football as a lot of the managers end up being around the same age as a lot of the players having just finished playing and end up one of the boys rather than a manager whereas Martin sets himself just far enough from us to stand aside to manage us and that’s what he does really really well.”

“This is my third season playing for him and I’m really enjoying it with the boys that are here. The basic players have been remained the same and all we’ve done is added players as we’ve gone along. This year we’ve added the established players who we wanted to add to go on and potentially challenge for trophies.”

“We’ve already added the club’s first trophy in 25 years when we beat Lordswood to win the Kent Senior Trophy, and hopefully we’ll be following that up with another one at the weekend!”

Join us later for the next in our series of “Road to Wembley” as we speak to every member of the Tunbridge Wells squad. Next up is Andy Irvine…

Picture supplied by Jake Stanford