G. O. Smith - Reputation

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."