It’s Not Only Premier League Players That Have a Story to Tell

I am sure many people are aware that I like to read a good book. Autobiographies are my favourite. Over the past few years I have read some and really enjoyed them while some of them were plain boring and I only finished them because maybe I had started to read two or three before them and had given up and did not want to tell myself that I was giving up on every book I read.

I have read a great deal of sporting Autobiographies and some of the most boring that I have read or attempted to read are of those who many would regard as leading players of their time. On the other hand some of the better sporting autobiographies that I have read were of players who for whatever reason started life with a Premier League Club and were left go while still a young player or maybe had their injury cut short because of injury for example.

This evening I completed another book which I thoroughly enjoyed. If I asked you who Ben Smith was I am sure that few could give the correct answer, or if they knew of a sporting person whose name is Ben Smith it could well be a different Ben Smith to the one that I was reading about.

Ben is now in his early 40’s and penned Journeyman in 2015. He signed for Arsenal as an 11 year old when George Graham was in charge and then Bruce Rioch. He was involved with the Arsenal Youth Team when it was coached by Pat Rice who would go on to be Arsene Wenger’s Number 2 for a number of years.

He was invited to train at one stage with the Arsenal first team and did so with players like Dennis Bergkamp and Ian Wright, but left the club in the 1995-96 season after a head to head with then head of Youth Development at Arsenal Liam Brady without making a single competitive outing for the Gunners.

He would join Reading a then Division One side and stayed at the club for two seasons making the massive sum of ONE competitive appearance, that coming in his first season with the club before he was once more released.

For the remainder of his professional career Ben Smith played in the lower leagues at clubs like Yeovil, Southend, Hereford, Shrewsbury, Weymouth, Crawley Town and Aldershot where he made 500 competitive appearances.

Normally when a person reads about a professional soccer player in England or Scotland and when they talk out  renewing a contract they talk about figures in their tens of thousands they want each week to play for a club or how many million they want over the course of a season. In his excellent book Ben Smith talks at times about trying to get an extra £50 a week and maybe a few thousand pounds if it meant to relocate to a new area if joining a new club.

In his career he celebrated three promotions, one relegation and a number of “big” wins in the F.A. Cup including beating Leeds United while playing with Hereford in November 2007 while one of the highlights of his career was playing with Crawley Town against Manchester United at Old Trafford in February 2011, a game the home side won 1-0, a United team that had the likes of Rafael, Wes Brown, John O’Shea, Michael Carrick, Anderson and Javier Hernandez in the starting line up, while Wayne Rooney, Chris Smalling, Darren Fletcher and a young Paul Pogba were on the bench. Crawley Town at the time were in the fifth tear of league football and early in the season then manager Steve Evans told Ben Smith he wanted him out of the club but smith would not move when the club would not pay him the £15,000 he wanted to terminate his contract with the club. The season would end on a high for him and the club however as they won the Football Conference.

When most of us think about soccer players in the UK we think mostly about the all too often over paid and sometimes over rated players that are the stars of the Premier League. But we all too often forget about the players that don’t make it at a Premier League Club and move down the leagues to make a career for themselves or we forget the players that maybe who may have what looks a good career ahead of them at a big club only for it to disappear when they pick up a serious injury.

Some of those latter players just like players in the Premier League write about their career however long it lasted at the end or towards the end of their career and often it is much more interesting that what some players who played their whole or the most of their playing career in the Premier League. Ben Smith’s story is one such excellent story and the book is well worth a read if you can manage to get your hands on. Maybe to source it online might be your easiest option in finding it.