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Clayton Ince has called on Walsall to harness their non-league experience to beat Stourbridge in their first round tie at the War Memorial Ground on Saturday (1pm).

Steve Jones and Troy Deeney played for Leigh RMI and Halesowen respectively while assistant manager Martin O’Connor started his career at Bromsgrove, with boss Chris Hutchings playing for Harrow Borough. Ince says that although playing at Stourbridge will be a good leveller, the Saddlers should be able to deal with it.

“We all come from those surroundings and we have to think about how it used to be,” he said.

“You have to take off your professional hat and use the experience when you played in non-league before. You can’t hold the ball too long and you can’t do too much with it. You’ve got to be direct and play the pitch.

“It’s hard but before we reached a professional level we were playing on those types of pitches with the same facilities.

“When I was at Wrexham there weren’t many professional teams around so you played lower league teams.

“Wrexham was pretty cold, pretty damp and the pitches were not what you expected so you had to get on with it.

“But it’s 11 v 11 with a ball to put in the back of the net. We can’t think about how the pitch is or how it slopes, we just have to go there and perform.”

Ince was part of the Crewe Alexandra team who lost 1-0 to Telford in the third round of 2004 and the Trinidad and Tobago international says the Saddlers must win the battle to avoid a similar upset.

“We let ourselves down and took Telford for granted,” he said.

“We thought we’d walk over them but it’s not all about that – it’s about going there and performing. It’s about the team who wants it most.

“You must go there and want it because no-one likes to lose. Going on the pitch and thinking it’ll be easy isn’t the way to think about it at all. You have to go there and want to play for it.

“In any game, FA Cup or league, once you play for it 99 per cent of the time you get what you deserve.”

The 37-year-old is eager to make up for his gaffe in Saturday’s 3-2 win at Wycombe when he allowed Scott Davies’ 40-yard free-kick to sail over his head.

Luckily for him, his team-mates were able to dig him out of a hole and reverse a 2-0 half-time deficit.

And he believes playing League One’s bottom side put the Saddlers in the right frame of mind for the weekend.

“It was good game to have a game at Wycombe because we go to the FA Cup game with a good mentality,” he said.

“Going out and performing will make you a stronger and better player and we can use the Wycombe game to get ourselves mentally prepared. We know we have to perform and show up on the day.”

But the stopper insists he is confident the Saddlers will not be on the end of an upset.

“We have to treat the game in a professional manner and that’s what being a professional is about. It’s not just having a professional name but also conducting yourself in a professional manner,” he said.