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Lots to celebrate for West Ham in Noble testimony

By on March 27, 2016

Mark Noble wanted to make tickets to his West Ham United testimonial match just £20 so they could be more accessible to young Hammers fans, as he himself once was.  He got tickets to his first game at Boleyn Ground for his birthday as a young fan and he would go to the ground before each home game even when he didn’t have a ticket, to see if he could try to find a way into the stadium.

Some twenty years later, his testimonial is just as much about honoring those lifelong West Ham fans young and old as it is his own loyalty to his boyhood club.

Noble stands out as a dying breed in English football — the one-club man.  He has stuck with West Ham through often chaotic times, including relegation, five different managers, five different chairmen and three different owners.  He has made over 300 appearances for the Hammers since his debut in 2004 and has become a fixture in their midfield for years over years.

He joined the club’s youth ranks as a thirteen-year-old from Arsenal’s academy and played for England’s Under-16, U-17, U18, U-19, and U-21 international teams.  However, he has never managed to win a cap for England’s senior team.  At the age of twenty-eight, it is still a possibility but one that Noble himself downplays.

The Londoner was the youngest player ever to appear for West Ham’s reserves at the age of fifteen and made his senior debut in the League Cup against Southend just two years later.  He walked home after that match as his mother and father were out of town.

Noble was subsequently loaned to Hull City and Ipswich Town after West Ham were promoted to the Premier League, but came back with vital experience under his belt and 2007 was undoubtedly his breakout year for the Hammers.  He scored his first Premier League goal in a heartbreaking 4-3 defeat to Tottenham Hotspur and in that moment, he says, he “realized what football meant.”

He established himself as a starter in Alan Curbishley’s mid-table side and his steely assurance in the midfield quickly earned the trust of the Boleyn Ground supporters.  The biggest test, however was relegation in 2010 and Noble seriously considered leaving his boyhood club.

“The question has been asked of me,” he said, per the Daily Mail.  “When we got relegated in 2011. I remember being away on holiday and getting phone calls from my agent, who told me that people had been in touch.”

“When I realized that they brought Big Sam in and the players they brought to the club – they had decided to give it a real go – I just batted it all away and decided to stay. I love this football club. It seems to be the right decision. The grass is not alway greener on the other side, as they say.”

Following immediate promotion back up to England’s top flight, earned the captains arm-band last year.  He has grown into his role as a club leader and says he learned a a lot of lessons in leadership from club veteran Kevin Nolan, per The Guardian: “He was really good with foreign players coming in and bedding them into the squad. The way the Premier League is now we have a lot of foreign players. A lot of very good foreign players. It’s partly my job to bring them in and bring them into part of the family. You’ve seen the relationship I’ve got with Dimi and Manu, Cheikhou, Sakho.

“All these boys came and didn’t speak a word of English, to be honest. I speak really quick, so they don’t understand me for about two months. Normally I say something and it takes them about five seconds to register and then they start laughing, and come back to me. It’s just a great place to be at the minute, with the players we’ve got and the team spirit we’ve got; it’s a real good time to be at West Ham.”

Currently, Slaven Bilic’s men sit on the brink of Champions League football, just one point behind Manchester City in fifth place.  He credits West Ham’s current success in the league to stability.

“In a way, the club was run like a circus in some stages over the last ten or 20 years,” he said, per the Mirror.

“Now it seems like the chairman and Karren Brady have done a great job of settling the club down – running it properly and that gives you a platform from which to move on, to progress.”

“They have brought in a great manager and, together, they have brought in great players. That is the way it should be done.”

And more than a decade after making his West Ham debut, the loyalty goes both ways.  His initial fears of a half-empty stadium have been squashed and his testimonial tomorrow night is sold out.

Homepage photo credit: Hilton Teper (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.