As Mark Noble comes to the end of his final season as a West Ham United, the captain begins a look back on his unique life and career...
I can’t remember when I first kicked a ball, but I do remember playing football as a young boy.
I had a friend who lived over the road from my house in Jenkins Road in Plaistow called Bradley Ling – he’s still my mate now, actually! – and we used to go to Cumberland Playing Field over the back every night from the moment I got back from school until it got dark.
There was a big metal spiked fence all the way around, but my garden backed onto the field, so my Dad cut a hole in the wooden fence and put hinges on it, so we’d crawl through and go over there!
When I was probably about seven or eight, I used to leave my house every morning at half-past-seven and go to the corner shop and get a Ribena and a Milky Bar, because I thought white chocolate was healthier than dark chocolate.
I’d then cross the A13 and knock for my friend Robert Hatton, who was the goalkeeper who played in my Testimonial and saved three penalties, and we’d go to Rosetta Primary School, in Canning Town and jump the fence and play football for an hour before school started!
I then joined a team called Barking Colts and started proper training and that’s where my love for football properly ignited and I went from strength to strength.
At eleven, I went to secondary school at Royal Docks, so I played for them, Barking Colts and also for the Newham District side, which was different back then because all the best young players played, rather than just for their clubs, as most do now.
I played as much football as I could and a lot of the games were watched by scouts from senior clubs and my Dad got approached by Arsenal, and I ended up signing for them for a few years and it was great.
There was three of us who played for Newham District who got scouted – me, Nicky Axford, who lived in my road, and Glen Harvey, who lived around the corner in Beckton – and our parents would take turns driving us up to Arsenal’s Academy for training on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturday mornings.
I was always late getting there, though, as it was too far away, and ultimately at 13 I left Arsenal when my contract was up, and joined my boyhood club, West Ham United.
I went to Chadwell Heath and we beat Peterborough something like 9-0 and I absolutely loved it and being a fan, that was it!
MARK OF APPROVAL
I owe so much of what I have managed to achieve to my Dad, Mark Senior.
My Dad understands football, which is a great thing. He was never one of those Dads who stood on the sidelines shouting and screaming. He would speak to all the other Dads before the game and then, as soon as it kicked-off, he’d go and stand near the corner flag on his own and just watch the game.
After the game, we’d be in the car and he would say stuff like ‘Well done, boy’ or ‘You could have done this or that a bit better’, but he would never criticise or praise me without a good reason.
It was one of those things where I just wanted to please him, more than anything, by playing well.
When I got my first call-up for England, I was just turned 15. All the best young boys in the country got invited to a big camp where they would pick the squad for the Under-16s, and I could tell that I was a good player and I thought I’d get picked.
So, when I didn’t get a letter, I was gutted, but then two days later I got a letter selecting me for the Under-17s to go to the Nordic International Tournament in Sweden alongside my West Ham teammate and best friend Chris Cohen.
We didn’t have a lot of money back then and obviously I wasn’t earning anything, but my Dad travelled by overnight trains to get there and watch me wearing an England shirt.
When I look back now, the things he went through for me were pretty special.
ALWAYS PLAYING UP
When Academy players are considered to be really good prospects, they will be asked to ‘play up’ in a higher age-group, and that happened to me during my time at the Academy of Football.
There are a few moments in the early part of my career that I can remember and one of them is that we played in an FA Youth Cup tie away at Gillingham in December 2004, when I was 17-and-a-half and I was already training with the first-team squad every day at that time.
We were 2-0 down and I scored a free-kick and won a penalty and scored it and we won 6-3.
Alan Pardew, who had given me my debut earlier that year in the League Cup, was the manager at the time and his assistant Peter Grant came in the dressing room after the game, pulled me to one side and said to me: “I’ve spoken to the boss and that’s the last time you’ll play at this level.”
I was just buzzing and thought ‘Wow!’.
I’ve got so many good memories, I could talk about those times all day long.