George Smith was an Australian professional

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

player who played as a

forward Forward is a relative direction, the opposite of backward. Forward may also refer to: People * Forward (surname) Sports * Forward (association football) * Forward (basketball), including: ** Point forward ** Power forward (basketball) ** Sm ...

. He captained the

Australia national soccer team Australia national soccer team may refer to: * Australia men's national soccer team ** Australia men's national under-23 soccer team ** Australia men's national under-20 soccer team ** Australia men's national under-17 soccer team ** Australia ...

in 1933. Often considered the best centre-forward in Australian soccer in the 1930s, he had an average of 2.66 goals per game for Australia and has had many goalscoring records throughout his 17-year career.

Club career

Smith played for a number of clubs in the Sydney and Wollongong areas including Corrimal, where he was the NSW top goalscorer for the 1932 season with 44 goals and St George up to 1936 where he scored 25 goals in 1933 and 51 goals in 1935. He then played for Granville and Leichhardt-Annandale. Throughout his career, Smith scored a total of 651 goals.

Granville-Clyde

Before the start of the 1936 NSW football, Smith signed for Granville-Clyde.

Metters

On 17 March 1938, Smith joined Metters. In May 1939, Smith refused to play with Metters after the team was relegated to the reserve grade, he said that if he was not good enough to play in the first-grade he would rather watch the games. He was dropped from Metters to seek a new club to join. He received offers from two clubs Leichhardt-Annandale and Woonona-Bulli to seek his transfer.

Wollongong

Saturday 21 June 1941, Smith made his transfer to Wollongong for £20 and on the same day he played against his former team St George. He announced his arrival in some style as he scored 6 goals to beat St George 10–0.

International career

Smith began his international career with Australia as captain in an international friendly, debuting in a 4–2 win over New Zealand scoring two goals. He became the first player to score a hat-trick for Australia in a 6–4 win against New Zealand. He scored seven goals in the three-match test series all against New Zealand in 1933. Smith was part of New South Wales' team, where he started and scored against his captained international team Australia. He returned to Australia's team with the captaincy given to Alec Cameron. He continued his outstanding goalscoring record by scoring four goals when Australia won 7–1 in July 1936 at Logan Park, Dunedin. A week later, Smith made another record by scoring five goals as he broke the record for most goals in an international match for Australia. For the first time in his national career, Smith failed to score when Australia won 4–1 over New Zealand. A year later, Smith retired from international football. Smith held the record as top goalscorer for Australia for 37 years, until the record was overtaken by

Attila Abonyi Attila Abonyi (born 16 August 1946 in Budapest) is a former Hungarian-born Australian soccer manager and player and played for the Australia national team. Abonyi made his senior international debut for Australia in 1967 at age 20, and h ...

in March 1973. On 3 May 1937, Smith announced his retirement from international football.

Career statistics

Club

International

:''Scores and results list Australia's goal tally first, score column indicates score after each Australia goal.''

Personal life

George Smith married Miss Dorris Ruddock.

References

External links

Australian Players Database
at Ozfootball. {{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, George Australian men's soccer players Australia men's international soccer players Men's association football forwards Soccer players from Wollongong