Steve Mowlem strides purposefully through the car park, past the single-storey changing rooms block and out to the edge of the pitch.

Immediately he is surrounded by a milling, chattering swarm of boys and girls, children and teenagers. They want to play football but before they can do that they want his attention, they want his approval and they want his permission.

All of which is a remarkable testament to the power of football for hope since Mowlem, not so long ago, was the last person likely to be considered as role model material.

Today he helps run a programme co-ordinated in the English south coast town of Bournemouth by the local regional officers of the crime reduction charity Nacro.

Yet not so long ago 36-year-old Steve Mowlem was not a leader but a follower, reaching out to the Nacro football programme in a belated attempt to pull his life back together.

Nacro, founded in 1966, runs rehabilitation and preventive programmes throughout England and Wales for people at risk of getting into crime and antisocial behaviour and those who have offended. Football is just one of the many and varied tools with which it pursues its mission. The charity runs more than 60 youth activity and inclusion projects working with more than 15,000 children and young people between the ages of 8 and 21. Many of these projects use football and other sports in order to engage with the young people. Nacro's first football project was launched in Salford in 1994 and the charity has been a member of the streetfootballworld network since 2002.

Down in Bournemouth the football programme run by officer Dom Weir has proved a lifeline for Mowlem whose life began turning wrong corners at the age of 10.

"I started stealing anything I could...."

He says: "I started fighting at school and I started stealing anything I could - even from my parents - to get money. At first it was for cigarettes, later it was drugs. Once some pals and myself even broke into my own home to steal stuff. I also learned how to get myself kicked out of school."

Kicking a football did not then feature in Mowlem's life. He was impelled instead by the lure of the wrong company, lessons in the wrong subjects while in the over-stretched care of the social services, and the opportunities to descend from cannabis to cocaine and then heroin.

Mother Maura says: "We knew he was in trouble, we knew he was stealing from us - he was very clever at taking things we wouldn't notice immediately - but we didn't know he was so deep intro drugs and we had no idea how to cope. We were so desperate that, in the end, I was the one who called the police."

Life at home proved impossible, relationships with successive girlfriends collapsed and Mowlem ended up wandering the beaches of Bournemouth and Brighton - sleeping rough at nights beneath the piers which were, simultaneously, providing happy amusement for so many other young people.

Eventually a drug clinic course helped wean Mowlem off his addictions to the extent that he could marry and become a father of first a son, then a daughter.

That was when he awoke to football.

"With my record, I stood no chance..."

He says: "When I had ever thought about what I wanted to do with my life it would have involved working with children. Obviously by now, with my record, I stood no chance. But my little boy loved football so I wanted to get involved myself - first for his sake, then as much for my own."

That was when Mowlem learned about Nacro's own football programme. The charity had a site for a pitch but needed community help in organising playing and coaching.

This was an opportunity which helped him, first, in channelling his energies into a worthwhile project and then saw him progress to become chairman of the joint sports association.

Mowlem and his committee took over a neighbouring pitch to expand the project, cleaned up the derelict changing rooms and began organising ‘real FA football' for age groups between seven and 18 years of age.

In due course Mowlem took up part-time, paid employment to look after the site; he completed coaching courses and is now undertaking a refereeing course, too.

Weir, his Nacro project leader, says: "It's remarkable, how much Steve has achieved for himself, for us at Nacro and for the people of the local community. You cannot overstate how much effort and dedication and sheer personal will it takes for someone to come from his background and turn himself around like this."

Mowlem is a firm disciplinarian with his youthful charges. He keeps a strict eye on their behaviour, on their obedience to the rules of the group and laws of the game and their personal manner.

That ranges from keeping the dressing rooms clean, to participating together in pre-match training disciplines - when all they really want is to play the game - right on down to keeping not just their football but their language clean.

"The inter-dependence kids learn through football is a brilliant lesson for life..."

Weir says: "Steve doesn't stand any nonsense. He appreciates the importance of making sure everyone develops within the group, within the team. The inter-dependence kids learn through football is a brilliant lesson for life away from the pitch. Hopefully what the kids learn will help carry them a long way in far more than sports tournaments."

The world of Steve Mowlem, on a community football pitch fringing one of the largest housing estates in the south of England some 50 miles from the nearest Premier League club, may appear light years distant from football's glamorous, high-profile upper reaches.

But there is a direct connection. Nacro draws financial support from a variety of national government agencies but the football project is also funded by grants from the Football Foundation and from FIFA's Football for Hope programme.

Steve Mowlem has no doubts about the power of football. As he watches his eager youngsters warming up for their own big match - as crucial to them as any cup final - he says: "I'll always be grateful to Nacro for giving me a chance to show I can be a useful member of the community. After all, very few employers would have given a job to someone with a track record like mine.

"I'm very proud of what I've achieved. Honestly, a few years ago, I would never have believed it myself."