Greg Smith has just finished his fifth season at Fylde, another successful campaign for the fly-half, playmaker and goal kicker. He can be a rather unsung part of the squad despite scoring a large number of points and missing just five matches in this period. He’s proved a very accurate kicker after taking over the role from another master kicker, Chris Johnson, early in the 2016-17 season. And these two stand on the shoulders of previous top goal kickers in the last 40 years such as Steve Burnage, Steve Gough and Mike Scott. This season has been Greg Smith’s most productive with a total of 280 points helping him break through the 1,000 points barrier to a total of 1,054 by the final game against Tynedale.
Not only has Smith been Fylde’s leading scorer during these five seasons but in this campaign he finished as top scorer in National Two (North) and 2nd ranked in the top five English rugby divisions, behind only Esher’s Sam Morley.
But there’s much more to Greg Smith than simply his goal kicking. He does his share of defensive work and his durability is outstanding, making 137 appearances for the Club out of 142 games. His rugby league background is telling in his outstanding passing ability and launching his dangerous three quarters.
He’s played a few seasons of quality amateur rugby league and that’s unsurprising when you consider his family heritage. His grandfather was one of the true greats in English RL, Eric Ashton MBE, who played in the 1950s and 1960s, and coached in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Ashton, a devastating centre, scooped all the honours in the game – 497 appearances for Wigan, skipper of the Club, Lancashire and Great Britain.
With such lineage, how could Greg have become anything other than a fine rugby player?! He commented: “I definitely learned a lot from him in the time I had and managed to go many places with him watching rugby. There’s a lot of rugby league in the family but I’m slowly changing them to union you will happy to know!”
In relation to goal kicking, Fylde played a little known but significant part in the development of the art. The legendary Edward ‘Pop’ Ogden, who played as a fly-half (and one time skipper) in the 1920s & 1930s, was described by one newspaper in 1930 as the finest goal kicker in the world. In particular Ogden was the originator of the now ubiquitous ’round the corner’ kicking style.
Before then, kickers approached the ball head on and toe punted it towards, and hopefully over, the posts. Pop reckoned he could kick it further and with greater accuracy with a football-style instep kick.
Journalist and TV presenter John Inverdale, and currently Chairman of the National Leagues, wrote an article in the Daily Telegraph in 2007 entitled ‘Jonny Wilkinson owes it all to ‘Pop’ Ogden’!
However, the technique took a very long time to come into general use. Greg Smith said: “The ‘straight-on method was what my grandfather used in the 1950s & ’60s. I’m not sure that I could get away with that style, especially given the heavy leather balls they used back then!”
Of the present rather than the past, Greg said of the 2021-22 season: “it’s gone OK but I look back at some of the results and we’ve shown we can compete with the top sides but a lack of consistency has cost us.
“We’ve proved what we’re about and we need to go a couple of steps further next season and we’d like to push for those top two positions rather than top five.”
