Bradley Stoke Youth FC walk around Wembley pitch at Community Shield Man Utd v Leicester City on Sunday Aug 7th 2016.
Bradley Stoke Youth FC (BSYFC) was again selected from all the FA Charter Standard Clubs in the UK and Ireland to walk around the Wembley pitch before the Community Shield match of Man Utd v Leicester City. This is the third time in 3 years that BSYFC have been selected and once again we were proud to be only 1 of 7 clubs to be selected for this great experience.

BSYFC was represented by squad players from the U14 girls and U9s. The day started at 8.45am with the coach rolling out of Bradley Stoke for arrival at Wembley for 11.45am. The journey was fine but just how many “are we nearly there yet” questions did we have to answer ?

On arrival we were based in the Press Room for the majority of the day where at 12.30pm we had our first walk around the Wembley pitch as we performed the rehearsal for the main event. We had our photo taken by the main photographer out on the pitch with our BSYFC placard and the squad. Then back to the Press Room for lunch. After lunch we had a football quiz. This highlighted just how little the managers of Scott Brown, Martin Lee and Ross Lee actually knew about general football stuff. We will need to do more revising if we get selected again next year. We had our final briefing and it was time for the real thing.
We walked past the Man Utd and Leicester City changing rooms and into position in the tunnel area next to the Leicester City team who were completing their warm up. Then we got the thumbs up to start the walk. We came out to 90,000 supporters applauding as we walked around the pitch. We got to the corner flag of the pitch then had to turn onto the pitch just behind the goal where we stood between the goal and the corner flag waving our flags. The TV camera was coming up and down filming us and we could be seen on the TV screens. At last we are famous !!! The teams then came out of the tunnel with us forming a guard of honour with the flags. We then all sang the National Anthem and when the players split to come towards the goal we moved off waving our flags while walking proudly behind the massive BSYFC placard as we went. We were out on the Wembley pitch for about 20mins. What a great experience for the players of BSYFC.

We then rushed back to the Press Room, picked up our stuff and rushed to our seats to watch the match and to meet up with the parents.
The match was great with Man Utd winning 2-1. Then with the game finished we boarded the coach back to Bradley Stoke. Some did have a little snooze on the way back. We arrived back at home for 9.30pm tired but still excited after another great day out.

Many thanks to McDonalds for selecting BSYFC for 3 years on the trot now. Well done to all the BSYFC squad for being great ambassadors for the club.