Australian Football

Best remembered for his feats as a coach Len Smith was also a highly capable footballer. He commenced with Northcote in the VFA and played in that club’s 1932 and 1933 premiership teams. He then crossed to Melbourne where he played 19 games in 1934-5 before returning to Northcote and playing in another winning grand final in 1936.

Still determined to make his mark in the VFL Smith was offered a lifeline by Fitzroy and jumped at the opportunity. Between 1937 and 1943 and in 1945 he played 76 games and kicked 52 goals for the Maroons. Used initially as a forward he metamorphosed into a commanding centre half back and was regarded as one of the best exponents of that position in the league.

After retiring as a player Smith spent an extended period coaching Fitzroy’s under nineteens before being appointed to the senior job in 1958. Espousing a fast, play-on style of football with an emphasis on high levels of physical fitness he transformed a team which had struggled the previous year, finishing eleventh, into genuine premiership hopefuls. In the end the ‘Roys finished fourth, followed by fifth, third, fifth and tenth place finishes. Smith then resigned, feeling perhaps that he had failed, but with the benefit of hindsight it would be more reasonable to suggest that he over-achieved, moulding a comparatively undistinguished bunch of players into one of the finest combinations in the land.

Smith spent the 1963 season coaching Coburg to fourth place in the VFA first division before returning to the VFL limelight the following year by taking the reins at Richmond. Once again, Smith’s inspirational leadership and tactical acumen were very much to the fore but his overall impact was undermined by illness, as he suffered a couple of heart attacks, which ultimately forced his resignation. His two seasons at the helm did not see the Tigers emerging as a premiership threat, but can nevertheless be viewed as establishing the template on which the club’s imminent success was based. In simple terms, this template involved pacy, predominantly tall players kicking long and playing on relentlessly, and it was on full and open display two years after Smith’s departure as Richmond withstood the challenge of Geelong in the 1967 grand final. Len Smith, sadly, did not live to see this triumph, having died just two months earlier.

Author - John Devaney