Reputation
By the time of his retirement, Smith was perhaps the most admired figure in the English game, familiarly known to several generations of schoolboys simply by his initials at a time when only one other sportsman - the cricketer W.G. Grace - was so recognised. Despite the emergence of later, equally capable centre forwards in a more recognisably modern mould - most notably Vivian Woodward, Smith's successor in the England team - his abilities were recalled and praised well into the 1940s. The International Federation of Football History & Statistics, a scholarly group based in Wiesbaden, describes him as "the most brilliant, indeed perfect, footballer in the world around the turn of the century".
"G.O." was, according to contemporaries, unusually popular among professional footballers who were generally wary of the leading amateurs, not least because - wrote Sir Frederick Wall, the long-serving Secretary of the Football Association - he was "a man without petty pride". Steve Bloomer, Wall recalled, "had an intense admiration" for his England striking partner, and Bloomer himself remarked that, unlike the majority of amateurs of the day, Smith was invariably courteous to his professional team-mates (and social inferiors): "He was the finest type of amateur, one who would always shake hands with us professionals in a manner which said plainly he was pleased to meet them."
Read more about this topic: G. O. Smith
Famous quotes containing the word reputation:
““What have I earned for all that work,” I said,
“For all that I have done at my own charge?
The daily spite of this unmannerly town,
Where who has served the most is most defamed,
The reputation of his lifetime lost
Between the night and morning....””
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“I am sorry to say we whites have a sad reputation among many of the Polynesians. The natives of these islands are naturally of a kindly and hospitable temper, but there has been implanted among them an almost instinctive hate of the white man. They esteem us, with rare exceptions, such as some of the missionaries, the most barbarous, treacherous, irreligious, and devilish creatures on the earth.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)