Frank Nouble interview: ‘People think football is glamorous but the lower leagues are a different world’

Frank Nouble had enjoyed a good season with Colchester United, reaching the League Two play-offs. Both he and his young family were happy and settled until the coronavirus pandemic turned his world upside and left his career hanging in the balance.

Although Nouble’s contract was due to expire, he was confident, for the first time in years, there would be another and he would not have to put his young family through any upheaval.

Having played for four different clubs in as many years since 2016, following a short stint in China, the 29-year-old thought the nomadic lifestyle he had been forced to live in order to continue playing professionally was over. But when football shut down last year because of the pandemic, Nouble, and many others, had their lives plunged into turmoil.

“The two years at Colchester, they went really well,” said Nouble. “We had cup success, we reached the play-offs. I was settled and didn’t want to leave.

“When Covid came they let four of us go. Just like that. All of us had been playing every week but were out of contract. It was a shock just getting the phone call telling me there would be no contract.

“You looked at the market and everything was chaotic, clubs were all thinking, ‘how do we save some money.’ They were signing two players, not five. It was a tense, waiting game. The toughest summer of my career until I got the call from Plymouth.

“I was just hoping the fact the play-off games with Colchester were on Sky Sports would help and that’s what happened, Ryan Lowe [Plymouth manager] was watching and he liked what he saw and the way I conducted myself.

“I knew I wasn’t going to get a contract, but I still played, risked injury. He liked that. It was a big relief. There were more players than there were jobs going. It was an awful time for a lot of my friends in the game.”

The move to Plymouth has not brought everything Nouble expected because of lockdown, but this weekend he will get another crack at causing an FA Cup upset against Sheffield United.

He continued: “Plymouth has been good from a football perspective, but with the Covid lockdowns we haven’t been able to enjoy the town or Devon as much as we hoped. That was one of the things that appealed to us making the move down here, being near the beach. The oldest has just started school and the youngest is in nursery, they are causing chaos in the house…”

Our chat on the phone is proof of that, with his concentration broken by the sound of two screaming children resisting being told to go to bed. “I’ll come and read you a story in five minutes…” said Nouble, with the sort of calmness few of us would muster.

It is a side to professional football we do not hear much about. Nouble knows his lifestyle has a negative impact on his family. Constantly on the move, earning enough money on a one or two-year contract to pay the bills and mortgage, but little more. The life of a lower league football is riddled with uncertainty.

After seven loan moves while on West Ham’s books, Nouble left the Hammers at the age of 20 after a handful of first-team appearances in the Premier League and Championship. He spent six months at Wolverhampton Wanderers, moving on to Ipswich Town and Coventry City in the Championship before a brave switch to play for Tianjin in China.

That lasted just six months, signing for League Two side Gillingham on his return to England, before a five-game spell at Southend, one year in South Wales with Newport County and then the move to Colchester in 2018, where he felt settled for the first time since he had been a teenager in Lewisham.

“There are moments in my career I could have done a bit better in terms of learning the game,” he reflects. “When I was 17, 18, 19 at West Ham, I thought I’d cracked it. I thought I was Superman and all I needed was a chance in the team and I would show I was good enough.

“It was tough to leave but I was 20, I’d had some good loans and bad ones. Just being out there playing with men, realising what football meant in the real world, meeting Mick McCarthy at Ipswich Town, he taught me what the real world was about for a young player.”

Not everything has gone smoothly since, but Nouble, a strong target man who brings others into the game, has no regrets.

“My family comes with me wherever I go because there is more to life than kicking a ball about,” he continued. “People look at footballers and think they are earning a lot of money and we are the lucky ones. Of course, we are lucky to be playing football, but it’s work you know.

“There is no security. You get a one-year or a two-year contract. And the situation is worse now than it has ever been because of Covid. There are even shorter contracts being given out.

“I don’t play for the financial rewards, because there aren’t any really. If I was merely interested in the money, I would have made some very different decisions. I had a nice five-year-contract at West Ham but I left when I was 20 because I couldn’t do that. I wanted to play.”

Having reached the quarter finals of the Carabao Cup with Colchester last season, knocking out Tottenham and Crystal Palace before losing to Manchester United, as well as beating Leeds United and drawing with Spurs in the FA Cup with Newport, Nouble is the sort of dangerous former Premier League player who Sheffield United will be wary of.

“If you ask any player in the lower leagues, the FA Cup remains such a special competition because of what it represents,” he explained. “If you’re like me and you started your career in the Premier League and had to drop down, it’s a chance to show you are a better player than people thought.

“You just want to put your best performance out there and that’s why you will always have upsets. You tend to play a better game than you would do on a week-by week-basis. I bet it drives managers mad.

“The lower down the leagues you go, it’s not always about ability or talent, it tends to be a matter of consistency. That’s why they are playing at that level, but you get some really talented players in the League One and Two. This is our time to shine.”