Jay Lovell has spent more than 15 years in non-league football. On 17 May, the 33-year-old escalator engineer from Hertfordshire will captain Cockfosters at Wembley in the FA Vase final against AFC Stoneham, and he says the moment still feels unreal.
Cockfosters, the Enfield club, are chasing the first major trophy in their history after beating Punjab United 3-1 on aggregate over two legs in the semi-finals last month. Lovell has lived the grind long enough to know how rare this chance is, and he is not pretending otherwise. “It is fairly emotional for me because I've worked it, I've been there and I've walked around Wembley,” he said. “It's always been what-if, and now the what-if has come true. It still hasn't sunk in that I'll be there on 17 May playing.”
For Lovell, Wembley is not just a venue. It is also the place where he works as an escalator engineer for a company that has installed, maintained and upgraded the stadium’s escalators. On event days, he and his colleagues are normally on site in case anything goes wrong. That meant the final had always felt close enough to touch but out of reach. “I remember walking around on the day of the FA Vase final last year before everyone got there,” he said. “There is a silence and you think, 'I could actually get here one day'. It's like winning the lottery - you spend the money in your head before you've won it. I never thought I'd get to Wembley.”
This time, he is not going there to check machinery. He is going to lead the team out. The final also brings a strange change of routine at work, where his colleagues have already turned his unlikely journey into a joke. “Now that I have actually reached the final, no-one is working,” Lovell said. “All of the lads are coming to watch me. We've passed the job on to someone else.” He added that one of his bosses laughed and asked whether he was really getting “a two-hour break to go and play football,” saying there has been plenty of banter about the occasion.
That contrast between the day job and the biggest match of his career gives Cockfosters' trip to Wembley a different kind of weight. Lovell said he wanted no confusion about who he belonged with on the day. “Don't put me in the same category as those two!” he joked, referring to the mix-up between work and football. The final against AFC Stoneham, based in the Hampshire town of Eastleigh and playing in the Wessex League Premier Division, is a one-off chance to turn years of lower-league football into a trophy that has eluded the club until now. For Lovell, who has spent his career waiting for a moment like this, the next step is simple: get to Wembley, take the captain's armband and make history. Related coverage on his long wait for the final can be found in the feature Cockfosters Fc captain Jay Lovell set for Wembley final after 15-year wait.
