Sunday 21 August 2016 12:03, UK
Mark Noble was born round the corner from West Ham's new London Stadium. Now he's ready to lead out West Ham there in the Premier League. It will be special, he tells Sky Sports' Patrick Davison, ahead of a Super Sunday clash with Bournemouth.
The journey for Mark Noble was a familiar one - six miles or so towards east London from the West Ham training ground in Chadwell Heath.
This time, of course, he had a nice car to travel in. Back then, as a young player coming through the club's academy, he could only afford to take the train.
Once he gets to Stratford, the differences are far more dramatic.
Now there's a 60,000-capacity stadium - one that produced so many amazing memories and medals during the Olympics - ready to host its first Premier League match and catapult West Ham towards a brighter future.
Back then there was nothing here. Except his girlfriend.
"I used to be in Stratford a lot as a kid," says Noble, who was born and bred in nearby Canning Town.
"I used to meet my wife here after training. Obviously she wasn't my wife then. But at 14 or 15, she used to work in a shop round the corner. I used to get the train here and get a lift to our house with her mum.
"I don't think there was anything here. Maybe it was green, I never even took notice of it. Stratford High Street was a completely different place.
"It's amazing to see what's here now - all the apartments going up, Westfield shopping centre, the stadium. It's probably one of most popular places in London at the minute. Full of architects and artists."
Now the club's captain, Noble is here to show us around West Ham's new stadium. The most striking thing, even from a few miles away, is how a stadium built for the London games is now so clearly West Ham's. Wrapped in the club's colours, decorated with its badge and its heroes - Noble included.
Inside the players' entrance, on claret and blue walls, are pictures of West Ham greats including Bobby Moore, Sir Geoff Hurst, Sir Trevor Brooking, Billy Bonds and Noble's own boyhood hero, Paolo Di Canio.
Further inside is the home dressing room - that Noble and Slaven Bilic 'didn't like' when they first saw but have since redesigned - and a 100m indoor track, once used by Usain Bolt and others on the path to glory and now used by the home team (away sides are banned) for warm-ups.
From there it's down what is, by a distance, the longest tunnel in the Premier League. Carpeted and open at the start, before narrowing close to the pitch. I can imagine players going down it feeling like they're about to walk out for a cup final.
"It's a long way but it's nice," says the man who led his team down it for the first time against NK Domzale in the Europa League.
"For that game, at first you couldn't really hear anything but as you got closer it was an incredible sound.
"Night games at the Boleyn, when it's a London derby or you score a late goal, the noise is fantastic. But here, the noise when we scored and when they sung bubbles before kick-off, it was great."
Now, for a moment that might even top that as West Ham prepare to introduce their new stadium to the Premier League against Bournemouth on Super Sunday.
"It's going to be an amazing feeling, from going to school round the corner, being born round the corner, to leading this fantastic club into this stadium it's special for me and special for my family," Noble said. "Not only that, the West Ham fans feel they've got one of their own leading their team."
Noble's hope is that, armed with the status and finances provided by the stadium, West Ham can become 'a top, top team' - one that makes it to the Champions League before the curtain falls on his own career.
On Sunday he'll make an old journey to lead West Ham into a new era.
Watch West Ham v Bournemouth live on Sky Sports 1 from 3.30pm on Super Sunday.
