At 15 I was the football league’s youngest player. 10 years later I was contemplating suicide

The youngest ever to appear in English football is now 30. Twice the age he was when he set the record, with perspectives changed by fatherhood and horizons cleared by the end of a career.

Reuben Noble-Lazarus has not kicked a ball for more than two years. His last appearance as a professional footballer came nearly seven years ago, as a late Rochdale substitute in League One.

There have been some dark and difficult times since then. Injuries, more injuries, scans and surgeries, physiotherapy and painkillers, an emotional breakdown and the torment of suicidal thoughts.

Simply reaching this point, where he feels able to reflect openly in public has taken courage but Noble-Lazarus has an important story to share, not only for gifted young footballers chasing their dreams but also those entrusted to look after them.

‘Unfulfilled’ is the word he finally settles on as the best to sum up his playing career. ‘I can’t look back with any pride, really. It should have amounted to more and that leaves a bitter taste.

‘I wish I could be more positive but I’m not going to sit here and say it was all somebody’s else’s fault. There’s a lot more I could have done at times, should have done. The rest is down to football. Luck, opinions, injuries, and the rest.’

It was a Sunday night in September 2008, when Noble-Lazarus heard Barnsley boss Simon Davey wanted him to report to train with first team next day and then travel with them for a game at Ipswich in the Championship on Tuesday.

He didn’t think much of it. He was starting Year 11 at Newsome High School, in Huddersfield but already spending two days each week at Barnsley, where he would train and catch up on his studies in the classroom.

There had been a buzz about the youth team at Oakwell. Among the promising youngsters were John Stones, now at Manchester City, Jordan Clark, now at Luton Town and Danny Rose, now at Grimsby Town.

Noble-Lazarus was the first to break out. The day before the call from Davey, he had scored a hat-trick for the Under-18s against a Sheffield United team featuring a young Kyle Walker.

Still nobody mentioned records, until Davey sent him on in the 84th minute of a 3-0 defeat at Portman Road and his life changed.

‘The whole thing about my debut meshes into one blur,’ says Noble-Lazarus. ‘Training with the first team was quite intimidating but I was in a world of my own, tunnel vision.

‘Then, on the day I went back to school, I was being pulled out of lessons left, right and centre for pictures and media. I didn’t like that at all, I was quiet at school. I just wanted to play football. That was it.’

At 15 years and 45 days, Noble-Lazarus had become the youngest ever to play senior football in England’s professional leagues, carving 113 days off a record set by Albert Gelhard of Bradford Park Avenue in 1929 and equalled by Ken Roberts of Wrexham in 1951. The record stands and could do for some time.

Arsenal’s Ethan Nwaneri made headlines in September 2022 as the youngest Premier League player, aged 15 days and 181 days when he came on as a sub against Brentford. Noble-Lazarus was more than four months younger on debut.

‘I was quite stocky, I could hold my own,’ he says. ‘We played two up front and I’d be like a number 10. I was agile and rapid. I’d drop in, pick it up on the half-turn and I’d be off. I was quick and had no fear.’

Noble-Lazarus made another cameo off the bench four days later, signed a scholarship at the academy, and continued his development when Mark Robins replaced Davey, starting his first game, scoring his first goal, signing his first professional contract.

The first setback came with a freak injury on his 18th birthday. He miscued a shot against Middlesbrough, kicked the floor and damaged ankle ligaments, but the big problem came when he bulked up in the gym and put on weight.

‘In hindsight, I was doing the wrong thing but I was just doing what I was told,’ he says. ‘I lost that explosive yard of pace, which was my game, and never got it back. It was a massive change in my career.’

There were twists and turns from here. Some regrets linger. Among them his resistance to attempts to mould him into a left wing-back at Barnsley, after a strong performance in that role against Hull City in April 2013.

Ill-timed injuries, though, become the recurring theme. Injury curtailed his first loan, to Scunthorpe in search of regular football. His next loan to Rochdale became a permanent move and there were good times but he dislocated a shoulder as his contract was about to expire.

Fit again in September, he secured a trial at Blackpool. Then this: ‘First day, we hadn’t even kicked a ball, about 10 minutes into the warm-up and I snapped my achilles tendon.

‘I was doing jumps with a weighted sandbag on my shoulders. Three jumps, then release the bag as you land and sprint. As I landed, I knew something bad had happened. I did the run, I wasn’t in any pain but the foot was just banging into the floor.

‘When I stopped and sat down at the end and couldn’t feel anything from my mid-calf downwards. That was the big one essentially. From then it was a downward spiral.’

Blackpool did what they could. They took him to A&E and put him in touch with someone at the PFA, the players’ union, who got him in front of a specialist and into surgery within five days.

They promised he could come back for another trial when he was fit but it seemed like a long road back from here.

He joined a gym and tried stay in shape. Barnsley’s physios Craig Sedgwick and Vikki Stevens helped with rehabilitation when possible, letting him visit for physio but outside professional football with his career in the balance, Noble-Lazarus lost his way.

‘I wasn’t coping with it at home,’ he says. ‘Slobbing about, I guess. I didn’t feel in the right head space to do the things I needed to do to get right. I was really down in the dumps, a recluse. I didn’t want to see anyone. I didn’t want to have conversations with my family.

‘I was living at my Mum’s and she tried to talk to me but I wouldn’t hear her. I feel bad now for not doing something earlier but I struggled mentally to get over that injury.

‘It took its toll. It reached a point where I was really bad with it, suicidal thoughts. I went for a night out, but I didn’t get drunk and I left early and got home and just had a breakdown in front of my Mum and brother.

‘I was in hysterics, just crying and saying I didn’t want to be here. All this had built up over time and it took its toll on my rehab.’

There were trials as he tried again to piece it all back together. ‘Cheltenham, Yeovil, Newport, I can’t remember all the clubs,’ says Noble-Lazarus. ‘Going to every trial, I knew, physically, I wasn’t fit and, mentally, I wasn’t the player I’d been.

‘At 15, I had the world at my feet and this was a harsh reality. I couldn’t do myself justice. I was virtually defeated before I’d kicked a ball.’

There was a spell at non-league Chorley before he started to play with mates at Linthwaite in the Huddersfield Sunday League, and then the pandemic. ‘A blessing in disguise,’ as he recalls.

‘I stripped everything back. Got past my demons a little bit or was coping with them. I went running every day. One of my mates, Bradley Riley built me some gym apparatus in my garden. Every day I’d run, smash out some pull-ups and dips, and do some core work. I got the fittest I’ve been.’

Halifax in the National League, were impressed enough to give him a one-year contract but, towards the end of preseason in the summer of 2020, a 50-50 tackle rocked his knee.

‘To this day, I’ve never got to the bottom of exactly what it is,’ says Noble-Lazarus. ‘I paid for my own scans and consultations time and time again, that was frustrating because they came back saying it wasn’t anything serious.

‘My theory is that it all went back to my achilles. By about November, I hadn’t played. I was pulled into a meeting where, basically, some of the staff and board accused me of faking it. I was fuming. I’m a chilled out person but I lost my head in that meeting.

‘I think it was probably more so pressure from the board because I heard they didn’t want to sign me as I’d been out of full time football for so long.’

Noble-Lazarus dipped into his own pocket for more scans, consultations and steroid injections until he reached a point near the end of the season where, having run out of ideas, he asked the physio to strap his leg tightly from thigh to his ankle and went training.

‘The strapping was so tight I could barely bend my leg in the warm-ups, before it gradually would ease. I was smashing painkillers before and after training to get through.

‘For about four weeks I was unbelievable. People who had never seen me play were saying, ‘we need to get you fit because you can really help us’ but I was hurting and my knee would swell up worse every day and the physio could see it.

‘I didn’t get in a match-day squad and obviously they let me go at the end of the season. I just wanted to let them know I wasn’t making it up.’

Noble-Lazarus paid for another scan and a private consultation and, with help from the PFA, had one final operation. It was the last roll of the dice and failed to cure the knee problem.

At 27, he turned his back on a game he once loved. ‘Hard to deal with,’ he admits. ‘I stopped and went through my struggles again for a while, trying to figure out where to go and what to do. Through it all I was a bit naïve because I never had any back-up plan.’

Three years on and Noble-Lazarus still has these ‘struggles’ from time to time but accepts that is part of who he now is, and is smiling and positive despite it all. He also has immense gratitude to those who helped him through the worst of it.

Although working in construction since October, he doesn’t see this as his long-term future. He and partner Joy are saving for a house. Their daughter Paisley was born last year.

Most importantly, he is a young man revived. Perhaps relieved to reach closure on a career that came with a huge burden of expectation from the moment he stepped from the bench at Ipswich, and still determined to make something of himself.

Coaching has little appeal but he is actively exploring a future helping young footballers with their mental health and wellbeing, looking for opportunities in that sphere and hoping to stumble across an opportunity.

‘Looking back, someone in that sort of role would’ve helped me immensely,’ says Noble-Lazarus.

What a mentor he could be with his experiences and intelligence. Football’s academies should be lining up to invite him in to talk to their scholars and young pros. He has valuable experiences to share. Football might do well to listen.