By MARTIN BLAKE
Ross Smith is hanging on for grim death. He's 31, and he can hear the time clock. Tick, tick, tick. He's played only three senior games for North Melbourne this season, indicating that the Roos do not count him in their best 21. Which means that it might all be over.
Smith has played 224 games for the Kangaroos, but he knows there is no certainty that he will reach 225. Yet just last year he was outstanding for North.
Little wonder he talks about the mental strain of playing at this level. He admits to having "a million things running through my head." Soon be will meet North management to assess his future.
Smith believes he can play another year at AFL level, but he is not sure North agrees. So he has made plans for a football afterlife. This year he began a physical education degree at Victoria University. He has fielded several coaching offers from VFL clubs already.
What he really wants, though, is to play. "I'd like to prove a few people wrong," he said yesterday. Smith is revered at North and loved for his loyalty to the club. So he is at pains to hose down any suggestion of bitterness towards the North match committee or coach Denis Pagan.
While Pagan acknowledges how tough it has been for Smith to sit by and watch the seniors, he cites the defender as a role model. "The way he's handled it shows what a real man he is," says the coach.
Smith said he had kept touch with Pagan. "He said to me a few weeks ago that he could understand if I got disappointed and negative, and I said that it was always going to be disappointing, but I'd never allow myself to get negative. I've been in the best nearly every week in the seconds, but it's tough to break into the senior side when they're playing so well."
Not that he is jumping out of his skin at the thought of playing out the year in the reserves and watching North win a premiership. "It takes its toll mentally," he said. "But I can only stick at it. The way I look at it, I was looking down the barrel three years ago when 'Schimma' (Wayne Schimmelbusch) was coaching, and Denis Pagan came in and gave me a chance. I had probably the best three years of my career.
"So I think I've still got something to offer. If I'm forced to retire, then I'll have to look at my options. But I'd rather not end it this way."
What is mystifying about Smith's case is that his slide has been so dramatic. Just last year he had an outstanding season, unlucky to miss a state-side spot that went to Richmond's Duncan Kellaway.
Smith knows his legs are not moving any faster, but he was never so quick as much as canny, hard-nosed, competitive. It seems that North just found itself with a glut of quality players jousting for a back-half spot.
Club champion Wayne Schwass is playing off half-back. Dean Laidley has sustained his excellence. The younger David King has taken Smith's place in the back pocket and performed with distinction.
Smith says everyone has a theory about his slide. Some have suggested his studies - previously he played househusband for his three boys while wife Leanne worked - have reduced the time available for extra training. But Smith is unsure. What he needs is a rash of injuries at North, and he's not about to contemplate that. "You'd never wish that on anyone."
Time will tell, of course. But that clock keeps ticking.
Article from The Age, August 23, 1996