Page 6 - 370167 LP253351 A Love Supreme Magazine - A5 48pp (Issue 260) v2

MARTIN SMITH:SON OF PELE
The last time we spoke to Martin Smith he had been walking around his garden picking dandelions off his lawn as the boredom of lockdown had forced him to do something, anything. Sunderland were in League One and looking tethered to League One.
This time he was in much higher spirits as we looked at the current Sunderland set up and how it compares to his experiences coming through the youth rankings to make a name
for himself in the first team. Doing occasional radio slots for TotalSport and commentary slots for Radio Northampton whenever Northampton play in the North East, he definitely keeps in touch with what’s happening at Sunderland.
“It’s really good doing the commentary for Radio Northampton, I love that but I do try and get to the Sunderland matches as much as I can. My son is 21 now and it always used to be a father and son thing where we would get to as many matches as we could and maybe a couple of away games. He’s working away now though so it’s more difficult. I’ve still been to about four or five games this year though”
Martin Smith played in a team laden with local youth players who had made it through
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to the first team, how does that actually compare with the modern era of youth development?
“I was thinking about this before and started making a list. There were loads weren’t there! Anthony Smith, Craig (Russell), Micky Gray, Martin Gray, Brian Atkinson, David Rush, Dicky Ord it’s incredible really. Even going back before then you had Gordon (Armstrong) and Owers. It’s very different now though.”
“The Academy set up kind of keeps the youth players separate from it all. When I was there, we were based at Roker Park. So, the first team had the first team dressing room and we were in the away team dress- ing room. We shared that with the reserves. So basically, you had all these older players in there when you were a kid.”