Norman "Norm" Smith (1 October 1946 – 21 February 2019) was an
Australian rules football
Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by k ...
er who played with
Hawthorn
Hawthorn or Hawthorns may refer to:
Plants
* '' Crataegus'' (hawthorn), a large genus of shrubs and trees in the family Rosaceae
* ''Rhaphiolepis'' (hawthorn), a genus of about 15 species of evergreen shrubs and small trees in the family Rosace ...
in the
Victorian Football League (VFL).
Early career and Hawthorn
Smith, a ruck-rover, played his early senior football at
Strathmerton
Strathmerton is a town in Victoria, Australia.
It is located in the Shire of Moira local government area on the Murray Valley Highway and Goulburn Valley Highway, about west of Cobram. At the , Strathmerton had a population of 1072.
History
...
in the
Murray Football League and won the league's
best and fairest
In Australian sport, the best and fairest award recognises the player(s) adjudged to have had the best performance in a game or over a season for a given sporting club or competition. The awards are sometimes dependent on not receiving a suspensi ...
medal in 1966. The following year he made five VFL appearances for Hawthorn, then spent time away from the game on national service, before returning to Strathmerton in 1970.
Goulburn Valley Football League
In 1971, Smith started playing in the
Goulburn Valley Football League, where he won back-to-back Morrison Medals, with
Tatura in 1974 and
Lemnos in 1975.
[
]
Ovens & Murray Football League
His two-year stint coaching Corowa, in 1977 and 1978, was the final two seasons that the club played in the Ovens & Murray Football League
The Ovens and Murray Football Netball League (O&MFNL) is an Australian rules football and netball competition containing ten clubs based in north-eastern Victoria, the southern Riverina region of New South Wales and the Ovens and Murray are ...
, before merging with Rutherglen.[
]
Canberra
In 1979 he coached Belconnen to its first Australian Capital Territory Football League grand final, which they lost to Ainslie. From 1980 to 1982, Smith played at West Canberra.[ He was coach in the last of those years and again for the 1985 season, in a non-playing capacity.][
Brent Smith, Norman's son, also played football in Canberra and in 1991 won the ]Mulrooney Medal
The Mulrooney Medal is an Australian rules football award for the best and fairest player in the AFL Canberra first-grade competition. It has been the premier individual award for Australian rules football in the Australian Capital Territory sinc ...
.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Norman
1946 births
Australian rules footballers from Victoria (Australia)
Hawthorn Football Club players
Tatura Football Club players
Shepparton Swans Football Club players
Corowa Football Club players
Corowa Football Club coaches
Belconnen Football Club players
2019 deaths