We have delved back 25 years and more, crossed seas, continents and generations to tell Paul Conway’s story, yet when the American midfielder is asked for a defining memory of Carlisle United he talks first about biscuits.

“I remember when we went down to the McVitie’s factory [in Carlisle],” says Conway, who shone for United in the 1990s. “The plant manager was telling us that production was always up on a Monday if the club had won.

“Wow. In America, our sports are a bit different – we’re more an entertainment-first culture – whereas in England, the football is in the people, in the soul.”

Conway chuckles, as he often does during our conversation. He has told this tale before, to people in the States. He turns 50 next month and, as well as his work as a lawyer, sometimes speaks to university students.

He gives them other examples of the English passion for football, and in doing so is inevitably drawn back to the Blues. Conway was integral to the United side that won the Division Three title in 1994/5 and, that spring, reached Wembley for the first time in the club’s history.

That feat will be celebrated with a 25th anniversary event next month and it is clear that the passing of time has crystallised, rather than dimmed, Conway’s affection. “I wouldn’t say it seems like yesterday, because my body tells me that, but it doesn’t seem like 25 years either.”

Conway had an intelligent touch and a goalscoring habit for Mick Wadsworth’s great team, having taken one of the less orthodox roads to Brunton Park. It started with his father; Jimmy Conway, who died in February, was an outstanding midfielder for Fulham and the Republic of Ireland, later going to play in America and settling in Portland.

While Paul had played football and been to university in the States, his ambition also lay in England, and he trained at Oldham before Willie Donachie, an old team-mate of Jimmy, put him on to another friend, Wadsworth. “I had no idea where Carlisle was,” Conway says. “I remember vividly, I was in a phone booth in London asking Willie which tube station had Carlisle on. He said, ‘You’ve got to go to the other end of the country!’”

Conway did well in a reserve game and earned an extended stay at a club being reinvigorated by Michael Knighton, but found it challenging initially. “In terms of the standard, pace and physicality, quite frankly there was a vast gap between the United States and England,” Conway says. “Although I was 22, I had the experience of a 17-18-year old. It was like going from playing with your mates in a cul-de-sac to playing on the M6.”

Wadsworth, in 1993, introduced Conway gradually. “My first appearance didn’t go too great. I got stuck with the ball and gave it away in a bad area, and Mervyn Day, who was in goal, had a good go at me. I went back in the reserves, made my full debut at Hereford on New Year’s Day, had a little run, went out of the team, then came back for Huddersfield in the Auto-Windscreens [Northern final first leg]. We got beat 4-1 and I got a little bit of the brunt of that from the fans…”

Conway knows he is building towards a happier account: of his afternoon as substitute against Scunthorpe at Brunton Park. “Traditionally, after 20 minutes in the dugout, you go and have a run,” he says. “When I did it that day, I got absolutely hammered by the Paddock. When we ran back, I told someone on the bench, ‘I don’t wanna go back out there again’. I was very happy sitting in there behind the bricks.

“The player that had replaced me in the team [Shaun Rouse] got injured. I came on about the hour mark and literally just kept running towards the goal. The ball got whipped into the box, David Reeves headed it down and I toed it in. The referee came over and said, ‘You’ve only been on the pitch 30 seconds!’ The way fans are, they started with more cheers than boos.”

Conway slotted a second before the end, and these first goals in England were major steps. He now remembers the flak with a detached perspective. “It wasn’t enjoyable for myself or my wife [Jennifer] – you hear less on the pitch, but she would hear the abuse in the ground – but there’s good and bad in all of it. I always believed fans had the right to share their opinion.

“There were a lot of people up there who knew the game, but it was just their passion coming out. Sometimes when people are dealing with issues, they are motivated more by their heart than their brain. You have to deal with that in football or in business.”

Conway helped Wadsworth’s team reach the play-offs, though he missed the first leg against Wycombe, because he had arranged his wedding for a May day in New York. He played in the second leg, when United’s aggregate defeat was completed, but it was the following campaign that saw United bolstered and brilliant.

Conway returned from injury in the autumn and graced Brunton Park with a brilliant solo goal in a 4-0 win against Barnet. “I have a picture of that in my office at home,” he says. “I think I lost out for goal of the season…” – he starts laughing – “..to what I still believe was a cross [David Currie’s wind-assisted gem against Rochdale]!”

Conway indulges my request for a description of his dribble. “I picked the ball up inside our half. I had a couple of options, and when you run at defenders, it’s always difficult for them. The defender pushed me left, the keeper came out, and I didn’t score many with my left foot…so yeah, it was a good goal.”

Conway’s other favourite strikes came against Bury, in a packed festive game, and in a classy team performance on his father’s old stage of Craven Cottage. It was the United of Reeves, Currie, Rod Thomas, Dean Walling, Darren Edmondson and more; a blend of home-grown talent and canny experience which, as well as dominating Division Three, reached Wembley in the Auto-Windscreens, playing Birmingham in front of 76,663 fans.

“Walking out there…I’ll never forget that,” Conway says. “I don’t think anyone will. It was a monumental event for the people of Carlisle. I’d heard some of them say they would never go to Wembley unless they saw Carlisle there. Some people from the area had never even been to London.”

On a day of goosebumps and green, white and red pageantry, 25,000 Cumbrians and twice as many from Birmingham saw Carlisle contest a knife-edge final against the Division Two leaders. A deflection deprived Conway of an early assist for Thomas, while a late challenge might easily have seen him awarded a penalty.

He is not aggrieved at this, but adds: “I do remember a chance late in the game which I would like to have back. Players fell down in front of me and I could have taken a few touches, but through fatigue, I hit it and missed the target. It ended in defeat, the first golden goal [by Birmingham’s Paul Tait] at Wembley, but the fans were proud of us and we were proud of ourselves.”

It was memorable, too, for Carlisle’s “deckchair” colours. “I liked it,” Conway says of the lurid kit. “I think it was unique. It’s the only shirt I have from my time at Carlisle.” Through amusing coincidence, it had extra meaning for the midfielder, given United were sponsored by a garage called Conway Vauxhall. “I used to tell people in America that I was doing so well, they put my name on the front and the whole team had to wear it…”

The next season was an anti-climax, Conway often injured as Carlisle were relegated and Wadsworth left for Norwich, before they bounced back to promotion, and Wembley again, under Day. The American took the first penalty in the shoot-out victory over Colchester under the Twin Towers in 1997 but United were on the brink of a dismantling, Knighton’s successful era about to collapse, good players sold and scattered.

Conway, keen for a new challenge, joined Northampton, but it was not a happy move and he left halfway through a two-year deal. After a loan under Wadsworth at Scarborough he returned to America, to Charleston, where he combined playing with coaching qualifications, ending his career at his father’s old club in Portland as he enrolled in Law School.

“My goal at the time was in the administration of the game,” he says. “Sometimes players were called out by non-players, saying they didn’t know the business of the game. It was important for me to check all the boxes.

“Financially it was a big commitment, and going to school every day, in my mid-30s, was a challenge for myself and my family. My wife held everything together.”

Conway, who has two daughters – Carlisle-born Madeleine, 23 and Gwendolyn, 20 – says his experience of football’s fluctuating fortunes made him a more intuitive lawyer. He now represents clients in the electric and utility world, many years into a career so removed from football that, in 2020, he finds himself squinting at images of his former life.

“I have a couple of pictures in my office,” he says. “There’s one of the Wembley team, and a few medals. Candidly, I got into such a different career, sometimes I need to remind myself I played.”

Conway, on LinkedIn, follows the working lives of team-mates like Tony Caig, Simon Davey and Stephane Pounewatchy, and he hankers after a return. “I’d love to get back to Carlisle,” says the midfielder, who lived in Wetheral. “I miss the pubs, the golf and the football.”

He also, he confesses, misses his nimble youth. “I had ankle surgery a year and a half ago and it’s causing some issues.” This means he will not be running half the pitch against Barnet again. “I’d need three days’ notice to get moving like that again.”

When he one day does return, will he dare reconvene with the Paddock? He lets out one last laugh. “I don’t think they’d recognise me anymore. I’ve basically shaved my head now. I’d be able to stand in there and be the ignorant American without anybody noticing…”