Norm Smith

Norman Walter Smith (21 November 1915 – 29 July 1973) was an Australian rules football player and coach in the Victorian Football League (VFL). After more than 200 games as a player with and , Smith began a twenty-year coaching career, including a fifteen-year stint at Melbourne.

A revered figure in the Australian Football Hall of Fame, Smith is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential coaches in the game's history, as well as having been considered by many one of the finest full-forwards of his era. Like legendary Collingwood coach Jock McHale, Smith was seen as able to take young players of different backgrounds and mould them into a disciplined team. Along with his brother Len, Smith's ability to think innovatively when it came to tactics had a profound influence on the game, most notably through his protégé Ron Barassi.

Smith played in four premierships with Melbourne and then coached the club to six further premierships in the 1950s and 1960s, but his sensational sacking midway through the 1965 season (when Melbourne were the reigning premiers) gave rise to what is known as the "Curse of Norm Smith". The supposed curse lasted 57 years until Melbourne defeated the Western Bulldogs in the 2021 AFL Grand Final. In 1996, Smith was chosen as the coach of the AFL Team of the Century.

Personal life Smith and elder brother Len (b. 1912) were the sons of ironworker Victor Smith and Ethel May (née Brown). After attending Westgarth Central School, Smith completed an engineering apprenticeship and worked at Millers rope-works in Brunswick. In 1943, he took over his father's engineering business in Northcote, later relocating it to North Coburg in 1954. On 19 October 1940, he married Marjorie Victoria Ellis, at the Wesley Church in Melbourne. Their only child, Peter, was born in 1947.

Playing career A brilliant all-round sportsman in his youth, Smith played first-grade district cricket and Australian football.

Finally, the situation exploded on the Friday night before the round 13, 1965 match against North Melbourne. A courier delivered a termination notice to Smith at his home. When the news leaked to the media, it created a sensation, arguably the most dramatic news story in Australian football history. Smith made an emotional appearance on television on the Sunday and speculation was rife that he would replace his ill brother, then coaching Richmond. Although he was reinstated within a week, he never again enjoyed his old relationship with the club. The Demons won only one more game for the year and missed the finals for the first time in eleven years. In a matter of a few dramatic months, Melbourne's dominance was dismantled. The Demons would not make the finals again until 1987.

A brief return to the finals After two more disappointing seasons, heart disease compelled Smith to resign from Melbourne at the end of 1967. It was a sad year for the Smith family, as brother Len had succumbed to a heart attack just months before his adopted club Richmond won the premiership. Feeling sufficiently recovered, Smith surprised many by accepting an offer to coach South Melbourne in 1969. At Albert Park, Smith pulled off what was considered one of his best coaching performances by taking the downtrodden Swans to the 1970 semi-final, their first finals appearance since 1945. However, the under-resourced and under-confident Swans couldn't sustain the effort and finished last and second last in the next two years. Smith resigned after the 1972 season.

Death and legacy

Norm Smith was only 57 when he died of a cerebral tumour at his home in Pascoe Vale on 29 July 1973. He was survived by his wife and son.

Smith's influence was wide-ranging. He increased the importance of the coach in Australian football with innovations such as using a runner to send messages to his players (in 1955). He raised the standards of fitness and team discipline, which enabled the evolution of the so-called "running game" in the 1970s. Although his blunt manner of speaking and intolerance for fools sometimes led him to conflict, he was universally admired and respected for his insightful thinking on the game and his mantra that teamwork was all. Although he was known as a great orator and a stern taskmaster, he was a quiet and retiring man away from the game. Paradoxically, he played and coached largely for the love of the game yet did as much as anyone else to move it forward from a semi-professional sport.

During the 1970s, Smith's son Peter played for Melbourne and Carlton in the VFL and for Coburg in the VFA as a full-forward and was Coburg's leading goalkicker for a season.

On 19 July 2007, Norm Smith was inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame as a playing Legend.

Norm Smith Medal and Norm Smith Memorial Trophy See main article: Norm Smith Medal

In 1979, the VFL instituted the Norm Smith Medal, awarded to the best player in the Grand Final. The first winner was Norm Smith's great nephew and Carlton player Wayne Harmes (Len Smith's grandson). He received the medal from Norm's widow, Marj.

In addition to the Norm Smith Medal, the Norm Smith Memorial Trophy is a Coaches Award "presented to the player who best represents the qualities of work ethic and preparation" at the Melbourne Football Club during their annual best and fairest award ceremony.