As Mark Noble comes to the end of his final season as a West Ham United, the Club captain looks back on his formative years at the Academy of Football...
I was just 15 when I played for West Ham United’s reserve team for the first time and I can remember it as if it was yesterday!
I was obviously still a pupil at Royal Docks Community School in Custom House and thankfully my PE teacher was a massive football fan, so when West Ham rang the school and asked ‘Can Mark leave early because there is a reserve-team game we want him to play in?’, he said ‘Yes’!
Back then, reserve-team football was a really big deal, with lots of first-team players playing in those games.
I turned up, a skinny little kid, and sat in the corner before playing for West Ham reserves at the age of 15 – it was nice!
The game was against Leicester and I started. Don Hutchison and Steve Lomas were also in the squad and they were senior professionals, so I just watched them and tried to learn as much as I could.
When I look back and think that game was more than half my life ago, it’s hard to believe how much time and how much has happened in the 19 years since.
I’d say my biggest achievement for myself and my biggest ‘Thank you’ to West Ham United has been my loyalty to the Club I support and to the fans who have supported me so well down the last 19 years.
When I first joined West Ham, there was a lad at the Academy who I instantly clicked with – Chris Cohen.
He was such a good player and we had a really healthy… I wouldn’t say rivalry because we were best mates, but we would never be on the same team in training!
We’d end up scrapping with each other because we both wanted to win so much. We’d end up in the indoor pitch at Chadwell Heath, literally fighting and ripping each other’s bibs off and going into mad tackles on one another. Then, after training, we’d be best friends again.
Chris was a couple of months older than me and he progressed a bit quicker than me to the first team, making his debut as a 16-year-old against Sunderland in December 2003 – eight months before me – and I remember thinking ‘I want to be there so badly’.
His early success at West Ham drove me on to get better myself because he got into the first team quicker than I did and played quicker than I did and was a top, top player and an even better person.
Chris went on to have a great career. He played 20-odd games for West Ham, then went to Yeovil Town, who were then in League One, and ended up at Nottingham Forest when he was 20. He stayed there for the rest of his career, making over 300 appearances, mostly in the Championship.
He’s at Luton Town now as first-team coach and I’ve spoken to some of the former West Ham players there and they say he’s a top man and the boys love him.
Despite our training ground scraps, Chris is a friend for life and he played a big part in me becoming the player I became, for which I’ll always be grateful.
I had so many coaches who had an influence on me when I was a young boy at the Academy of Football.
Tony Carr was obviously the Academy Director throughout my time there and he pushed for me to progress all the time.
Paul Heffer was Tony’s assistant and he’s still at the Club now. What can I say about Paul? He helped me and made sure I understood the West Ham ethos.
When I got into the youth team, Kevin Keen had just taken over and we instantly had a bond. He was great with me, having followed he same career path, and he moved up to be on Alan Curbishley’s first-team coaching staff and was always pushing for me to be involved, although he would never tell me that himself.
I just loved playing for Kev. He never took anything less than 100 per cent effort from us, but he made training sessions and games so much fun and it made it easier to work hard and get better.
Then there was Peter Brabrook, who was a member of West Ham’s FA Cup and European Cup Winners’ Cup-winning teams in the 1960s, was the U19s manager and he helped bring me up.
I remember being in the dressing room with players like Anton Ferdinand, who was a few years older than me, and I came in, played and did well, and I think they accepted me pretty quickly, and Peter had a big part to play in that.