TILING Liverpool Legend Steven Gerrard’s roof gave this footballer the desire to “make it” in the beautiful game.
Flitting around non-league, the winger made ends meet by roofing in his native Merseyside.
The midfielder came up against former client Steven Gerrard in the Premier League
It was one one particular job where he came face-to-face with one of England’s finest ever players in Gerrard.
In between fixing the slates on a gym and games room extension, the footie ace was given cans of coke and sausage rolls from Gerrard’s kind missus Alex Curran.
He started his footballing journey with Gerrard’s own Liverpool at just nine years old.
However seven years later he was let go.
But working for the Liverpool icon stimlated a real desire to succeed.
And it paid off, the now 35-year-old joined Football League side Plymouth in 2008.
Three years later Brighton swooped in for the tricky player, before in August 2012 Cardiff paid £1m for him.
He achieved Premier League promotion in his first season – setting up a top-flight tussle against the bloke he had done a roof for years earlier.
It is of course Craig Noone!
The Kirkby-born midfielder did actually play against Gerrard in the Carling Cup and FA Cup in the 2011-12 season during his time at Brighton.
After the Carling Cup game he sprinted to Gerrard to ask for his shirt, got the Reds ace to sign it, and still has it framed in his house.
But it was for Cardiff where he experienced what he would have only dreamt about – playing top-flight football against an icon of the game.
There was only one player Noone was going to make a beeline for here
Craig Noone managed to get Steven Gerrard’s shirt after a cup game
Speaking about hiring Noone all those years ago, Gerrard said in the Daily Mail: “While he was starting out as a footballer, he worked as a roofer part-time and he did some work in my house.”
And on that experience, Noone told WalesOnline: “I did the gym and games room at Steven Gerrard’s, it was a big extension on the house.
“When you were working there you’d see his lifestyle – go to training at 9am and come home at 1.30pm or 2pm while I was slogging it out – and you’d be thinking: ‘I need to do that one day’.
“I didn’t want to be a roofer for the rest of my life. I always knew I wanted to be a footballer and I was going to work as hard as I could to achieve it.”
Noone, who made 158 appearances for Cardiff between 2012-2017, has just been released by Australian side Melbourne FC after two seasons Down Under.
So it may well be that his remarkable footballing journey has come to an end.
Craig Noone, now 35, has just been released by Australian side Melbourne FC
