Martin Smith started his career at his boyhood team Sunderland where he was involved in two Division One title winning teams which won promotion to the Premier League.
During his time with the Black Cats, Smith made his only appearance in an England shirt for the Under-21’s in a 1-0 win over the Republic of Ireland. Smith was a 68 minute substitute, coming on for Chris Bart-Williams to play alongside the likes of Sol Campbell, Nicky Butt and Julian Joachim.
Smith was dubbed ‘The Son of Pele’ by Sunderland fanzine A Love Supreme but after 119 appearances and 25 goals for the Black Cats, he moved on and signed for Sheffield United at the start of the 1999/2000 season.
A year later and Smith was on the move again. This time to Huddersfield Town where he scored 17 goals during the Terriers’ relegation season of 2002/03.
It was at the end of that season that Martin Wilkinson finally got his man having flown out to Marbella where Smith was holidaying. ‘Smudger’ signed for Northampton Town and the football genius and spent three seasons chasing promotion at Sixfields.
In this first part hear Smudger’s thoughts on the two Cobblers managers he played for – Martin Wilkinson and Colin Calderwood. How playing for the Cobblers differed to his previous clubs and his memories of that first game in a claret and white shirt on a red hot August day against Torquay.
Subscribe (for free!) on Apple Podcasts (leave us a 5 star review while you’re there), Spotify or your favourite podcast app.
Support the podcast on Patreon for as little as $2 a month.
There is more Cobblers related content as well as all of our previous episodes on our website https://cobblerstome.com
You can get involved with the podcast by doing the following things:
Tweet us @CobblersToMe.
Like us on Facebook at itsallcobblers.
or send us an email here.
It’s All Cobblers To Me is a Vibrant Sound Media production for the fans of Northampton Town Football Club.
Charles is the founder and main presenter of the award-winning It’s All Cobblers To Me podcast.
He began the podcast after going self-employed in 2018 as a podcast producer and voiceover artist. The original thought being that It’s All Cobblers To Me would be a place to try out new things – like a test podcast of sorts.
As well as being Cobblers mad, Charles is also a ultramarathon runner and has a blog about that that he tries to keep up to date as often as he can.
