THREE and a half years ago, under the lights of the Athletic Grounds in Armagh, Down bridged a 12-year gap to win the U20 Ulster title by beating Monaghan by seven points.
There were plenty of names on that Down panel that would go on to bigger and better things; Sigerson-winning captain Ryan Magill, his cousin and Down teammate Danny Magill and Tailteann Cup Final man of the match Odhran Murdock among them.
Another name now lingers on the tongue of GAA fans around the country but for a different reason. Charlie Smyth was between the sticks that night for Conor Laverty’s side, kicking over two frees to give the crowd a taste of his ability from the ground.
Smyth now looks to kick, as he did then, in very different surroundings, having signed for another two years with the New Orleans Saints in the NFL.
However, speaking to him, you would notice little difference from the young man from Mayobridge who departed for the States to play American football a little under a year ago.
“It’s not a bad gig, is it?“, giggled Smyth as he recounted what has been a whirlwind year for him.
“I mean, especially the fact that it was a hobby, something I would have done in free time, and then, essentially, now it’s basically the same only it’s a different ball, different sport, and that’s your job that you specialise in.”
There was many a night where Smyth would go to the St Patrick’s club on the Old Road and practice kicking balls from all over the field, perfecting his craft to best serve Down, Mayobridge and St Mary’s College, where he was on the Sigerson panel.
When he was signed by the Lousiana-based NFL franchise, Smyth was in a dogfight from the get-go, vying with a seasoned professional for the starting spot, with the entire island of Ireland backing him.
However, it was not to be, with Smyth, in the eyes of his coaches, needing a little more fine-tuning before kitting up every Sunday in front of tens of thousands of fans in the stands and millions of fans across the world.
“Sometimes you get caught up in the emotion of, like, I’m not playing on Sundays [and] kind of feeling sorry for yourself a bit,” Smyth said.
“You snap out of that fairly quickly and say, I count your blessings for how grateful you are to be in this position.
“How many American kids played six years of college football and can’t get a look in NFL buildings? Here’s me that’s been doing this for just over a year now, and I’m in an NFL building.
“So, it’s a good feeling now, and it ultimately just makes you want it more. The longer you’re not playing, the more you want it because you know how good it’s going to feel whenever it does happen and hasn’t been just plain sailing.”
The former Down panel member is currently the number two kicker for the Black and Gold, behind Blake Grupe, who is going into his fourth season in the NFL.
Competition between kickers can be brutal as there are only 32 teams and they only need one kicker on the squad for a matchday.
However, Smyth is determined to make the 53-man line-up, despite most of his rivals having a decade-long head start on him.
“It was a sort of quick time to get in the team, especially with the IPP (International Player Pathway) and stuff but now you’re in the building for a year and you haven’t played on a Sunday.
“I want this more now and it’s going to make it even more worth it for whenever. My time is to come in this league, and I’m confident that’s going to happen.”
Smyth spent last season in the practice squad honing his skills under the watchful eyes of his many coaches, only managing little more than a handful of preseason kicks with the Saints.
However, the first one of those was a game-winning field goal against the Arizona Cardinals which made the rounds on social media and alerted people to the fact that the man from Mayobridge had arrived and he was not just a box-ticker.
However, the U20 Ulster champion was able to acknowledge how far he had come in the short space of time and thrive in the shadow of Grupe.
He said: “It was a great learning year for myself.
“It allowed me to really not have any pressure in terms of just focusing on getting better.
“In case you’re needed, you’re ready, you’re trying to stay ready as well.
“Obviously, [it was] disappointing not to get playing, but there’s no kicker turnover, unless there’s any injuries or bad form.”
The Saints missed out on the play-offs finishing with five wins and 12 losses, however, Grupe was successful with 87 per cent of his kicks, missing just four out of 31, meaning that Smyth has got a tricky off-season ahead of him if he is to take his spot come next season.
“Blake had a great year to be fair to him and I also feel like I had a good year on the practice squad, and I feel like that’s the reason why they want me back,” said Smyth.
“So yeah, [I have] some certainty now going forward (after signing the new contract), and then I can come home and mentally reset and spend some time with friends and family, and then we’ll go out again in this off-season, and hopefully that this off-season will lead to some playing time in 2025.”
The homesickness can be a massive hump to get over for anyone moving abroad but it is harder when it all happens so fast, for Smyth, he had hardly set his bags down before starting to get to work with his new team.
“I’d say it has obviously been a bit of an adjustment”, remarked Smyth at the comparison of rural Ireland life in Mayobridge to the bright lights of New Orleans.
“The toughest thing about it is just like, on a Tuesday or Wednesday evening, you don’t have much going on, and you’re in an apartment by yourself and you don’t have some of the boys from the ‘Bridge to go for a coffee with, or go for some food with, or you can just go for a spin in the car and just chat and have the craic. That’s not the case here.”
One thing that Smyth said he missed the most was the way he could speak his own lingo back home. Despite being a Gaeilgeoir, Smyth meant the odd ‘How’s she cuttin’?’ rather than ‘Caidé mar atá tú?’, however, he has been able to bring one or two phrases over with him.
“[I’m looking forward to] even just being able to talk your normal lingo. I have Derek Carr, he does be saying to me, now ‘You have any craic from me?’ So, I kind of catch myself by surprise every time he says that, and [I think] ‘Wait, what do I say?
“I have some of them trained up with that but just being able to come home and just have your normal chat, and being able to talk football with the boys again.”
However, despite uprooting his life and moving continents, Smyth is hardly alone, with the kickers and punters sharing a lot of the same meetings and practices, bonds are bound to flourish.
“Now, I’m very, really close with our punter, Matt Hayball. We come in as rookies together.”
Even Grupe, the man who Smyth is in direct competition with every single day, has become someone he sees as a friend.
“We deal with each other every single day. You know, the more time was spent together, the better relationships got.
“I would call him a friend, I would be honest, we’re obviously the specialists. We’re with each other all the time.
“Myself, Zach [Wood] (our long snapper), Matt [Hayball], our punter and holder and Blake. We’re with each other a lot of the time, and we’re doing stuff together outside the facility.
“It might be going for a round the golf or something, maybe in the training camp or playing cards together all the time, because we don’t have meetings and stuff they [the offensive and defensive players] got, we just go out for dinners the night before games, we’re all doing that together.”
Despite being very much a different group to the other two sections of players, doesn’t make their training schedules any easier, as the kickers do not kick two days in a row, to avoid straining the muscle group, so rigorous is the workout.
Even with very little contact involved in the position of specialist (a place-kicker or a punter), they are in the gym every day making sure that they are in peak condition for gameday.
However, coaches are looking at much more than just how far you can kick the ‘pigskin’ or how accurate your field goals are, as Smyth found out.
“They [the Saints’ coaches] watch every single thing you do on tape,” said Smyth.
“So they mightn’t tell you what they’re thinking, but you know for sure that they’re analysing every single thing you do.”
“Those guys analyse every single thing. They’re not just analysing your kick, they analyse how you talk to the catering staff, how you deal with people, like it’s not just about being a good kicker. It’s about being a good person on it’s, it’s about your approach.
“Are you a good person to be around? Do you lift people’s moods? Are you [coming to training] grumpy every day? And they’re analysing everything, not just analysing the kicking.
“So… you’re just putting yourself out there every day to get analysed.”
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As daunting as that level of analysis may seem, it is important for a kicker to be a level head around the camp as kickers usually come into the game in high-pressure, high-stakes situations - maybe one kick could win the team the Super Bowl or make sure the team goes through to the playoffs in January - so coaches need to make sure that they are sending a player on that can handle that pressure and keep the rest of the team calm.
Hopefully, the experiences that the former Down goalkeeper has had will come in handy next year and he can think back to that night in the Athletic Grounds and do what he did that night, just kick.
