Youngest daughter Phoebe shares his birthplace, Walsall Manor Hospital, courtesy of the family’s temporary shift back to the UK. Elliott and Madison were born in Hamilton.
The original move to New Zealand came about because Smith married a Kiwi, Sheree, whose home town is Morrinsville.
They met in the UK but it wasn’t long before they were drawn to this part of the world, so Smith has been living in New Zealand “on and off” for the past 15 years.
He has a background that includes a little bit of semi-professional football, five years of military service, some teaching, a lot of football coaching and — for the first six years of his time in New Zealand — working with Sheree’s family, who are dairy farmers near Morrinsville.
Smith played for Chasetown, who were in the Conference North league in English football’s national pyramid.
He wasn’t there long, deciding instead to join the army.
“I was a leftback,” he said.
“I was only really in the team because I was a utility player.
“When I was in the military, it was all up front. I told people I was a striker. It wasn’t until I moved to Gisborne that the coaches here decided I needed to be a defensive midfielder.”
He had been coaching in various capacities since he was 16, and did a bit of scouting of promising players for clubs.
When he joined the army, he worked initially as an intelligence officer and then moved into a teaching role, giving training on survival skills in nuclear, biological and chemical warfare at basic training.
While with the military he gained teaching and football coaching qualifications, skills that proved useful in New Zealand.
In the Bay of Plenty, he did a lot of work developing the girls’ academy with the Omokoroa Football Club, work that stood him in good stead when he moved into his role with Central Football.
Thistle approached him for advice about the establishment of a “director of football” role, and he was excited about the opportunity to contribute to positive developments at the club.
He says Tam Cramer has already made clear his desire for the team to develop a strong and supportive culture.
Smith says his role is full-time, and he understands an element of it is funded.
“Another chunk of it will come from new programmes and increased revenue the job should create,” he said.
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“I need to be bringing members and money and players into the club to sustain the role long-term.”
Thistle president Shannon Dowsing said Thistle had been “very successful” with funding over the years.
“The 2023 campaign was affected by damage from Cyclone Gabrielle,” he said.
“We fundraised for private flights for all early-season games, and commercial flights later on.
“We have lots of volunteer activity, and fundraise through things like providing support for Rhythm and Vines . . . that always gets us good income.
“We’ve just signed a three-year deal with Electrinet and will be known as Electrinet Gisborne Thistle.”
Of the distinction between head coach and director of football, Dowsing said: “We want Tam to focus on coaching and Lee to focus on management and his programmes. Lee will still be coaching within the programmes he runs, and still has the ability to further that part of his football experience. In terms of first-team culture, he will manage and Tam will coach.
“We want to increase the pool of our coaching talent to meet the needs of an aspirational semi-professional club. We are not the Phoenix but we can act like we have our act together.
“Outside of these two programmes (Phoenix pre-academy and Fantails) we have given Lee plenty of scope to introduce more activity such as futsal and street football. We want to be able to run a lot more casual football as well as a few of these new popular formats so we have year-round opportunity for people to participate.”
