After Michael Smith’s double against Mansfield Town in November sent Sheffield Wednesday into the FA Cup third round, the striker was clear when asked about the tie he wanted next. “Newcastle, away,” Smith, born and raised in Wallsend, fired back, quick as a flash.
He got his wish — well, up to a point, anyway. Smith will have to make do with a 30,000 crowd at Hillsborough, instead of St James’ Park, but after almost 500 career appearances, and 135 goals, the Newcastle United fanatic will tonight finally get to face his beloved Magpies.
Smith is 31, and Wednesday are the 14th club of a peripatetic career that began with Darlington in League Two, spans the four divisions beneath the top flight and has taken in spells with AFC Wimbledon, Swindon Town, Barnsley, Portsmouth and most recently Rotherham United. Yet the prospect of a first competitive game against his boyhood club leaves him giddy with excitement.
“My whole family are black and white,” Smith, whose idol is Alan Shearer, says. “All my friends still go home and away.
“It’s a bit of a goldfish bowl up there. The city is just besotted with the club — you’re either black and white, or don’t follow football. So it meant everything growing up. I remember watching the FA Cup finals we lost, in 1998 [to Arsenal] and ’99 [Manchester United]. I’ve still managed to nab a ticket for the odd game over the years. I managed to get a ticket for the 4-4 draw against Arsenal [in 2011] when Cheick Tioté scored that [87th-minute] equaliser. All my mates had left, but because I rarely got to games I stayed. When we pulled it back to 4-3 all my mates were scrambling to get back in.
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“The club’s been down for the past ten years or so. So to see the city buzzing again, talk to friends who are excited to go to the games again, see the feel-good factor, it’s great.
“I’m dying to get out on that pitch. But first and foremost, I want to get a result for Sheffield Wednesday. We want to progress. We want to test ourselves against the best teams in the country. And at this moment in time, Newcastle are one of them.”
Eddie Howe’s side are certainly that — third in the Premier League, with only one defeat all season. Darren Moore’s team are not used to losing either, however, and lie second in Sky Bet League One, unbeaten in 90 minutes in their past 17 matches.
Smith’s family and more than 20 friends will travel down from the North East to be at Hillsborough tonight and he admits there may be some split loyalties in the stands — his family will be in with the home support, but his friends insisted on the away end.
“Funnily enough, I opened my daughter’s wardrobe up yesterday and her Wednesday kit was hanging right next to her Newcastle kit,” Smith says. “I had a little chuckle to myself. But she’ll be there in the blue and white, don’t worry.”
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When you become a professional footballer, your relationship with fandom, and therefore the club you grew up supporting, often changes. “It does, yeah,” Smith says. “But I’m still that lad, inside, who used to go up to the training ground and stand on my bike to watch the players train. I’ve still got that [love] in me for Newcastle United. I think I’ll always have that. It’s the way I’ve been brought up. My dad’s Newcastle daft, my brother’s Newcastle daft.”
Smith is enjoying arguably the most successful period of his career. After making the short hop from Rotherham to Wednesday in the summer, he has scored 11 goals and has eyes on a remarkable fourth League One promotion in five years.
Last year, Smith spent all season trying to hit a 25-goal target set by Richie Barker, the former Rotherham striker and assistant coach, who promised to hand over his prized possession if he did — a match-worn, signed Shearer shirt. Smith did reach a quarter-century of goals, but strikes in the Papa John’s Trophy apparently didn’t count, leaving him five short. So, shortly after automatic promotion had been secured, Rotherham fans clubbed together to buy their striker a signed, framed shirt worn by Shearer, with the additional funds raised donated to Rotherham Hospice.
“I’ve got that up in the house,” Smith says. “It was an unbelievable thing they did. I was really humbled.”
Tonight means a reunion with another friend too, the defender Dan Burn, a fellow alumni of Darlington’s youth team who climbed the pyramid with Fulham, Wigan Athletic and Brighton & Hove Albion before signing for his boyhood club last January. “His rise has been unbelievable,” Smith says. “But he’s still the same humble lad. He was pushing trollies in an Asda car park before he got a trial at Darlington.”
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Smith, like Burn, is something of a late bloomer. “I had trials here, there and everywhere when I was younger, but I mainly played boys’ club football — Whitley Bay Boys’ Club, Wallsend Boys’ Club — and I didn’t get picked up by Darlington until I was 16,” he says. “But looking back now, you see all these lads going into academies really young, being promised the world. I preferred my journey: I got to enjoy playing football with my mates.”
How will Smith celebrate if he scores? Raise one arm in the air à la Shearer? “I don’t think I’d be allowed back in the city if I did that,” he says.
