The Football Coaching Life: Ron Smith

The Football Coaching Life Podcast

Dr. Ron Smith (Smudger to his friends) is well known in Australian Football circles. Often referred to as a ‘Coaching Guru’ and developer of many of Australia’s ‘Golden Generation’.

Prior to coming to Australia, Ron played at junior level at his beloved North London Tottenham Hotspurs before ‘dickie knees’ impacted his professional ambitions.

He has coached in Iceland and Malaysia as well as in Australia’s A-League with Perth Glory. Ron has assisted many of our National Team coaches as an analyst, attending both World and Asian Cups as well as part of Football Australia’s Technical Department on a couple of occasions.

Perhaps most well remembered as the hugely successful Coach at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra, where many wonderful players like Viduka, Aloisi, Bresciano, Moore, Neil, Skoko, Grella, Simunic and Zelic, to name a few, came through.

Smudger has been arguably our greatest student of the game, analysing thousands of EPL and International Men’s and Women’s World Cup games and sharing his knowledge and wisdom about the behaviours of the Worlds best. Perhaps his favourite topic is ‘How goals are scored’.

Ron received his PhD on ‘Goal scoring patterns in professional football' from the University of Canberra in 2016

Join Gary Cole as he explores the Football Coaching Life of Dr Ron Smith.