Fans’ favourite Smith was unable to feature in Aberdeen’s Uefa Cup last-32 defeat against German giants Bayern Munich – where the 2-2 first leg draw was another Pittodrie stunner under the lights – due to injury.
Coming through the ranks at Celtic before joining the Dons from Dutch side ADO Den Haag ahead of the 2005/06 season (and making an almost immediate impact with a late winner in a 3-2 Granite City win over Rangers in the August of his first campaign) highly-rated Smith’s next three campaigns with the club, from 2006/07 onwards, were hindered by physical setbacks.
His second season (06/07) saw Smith suffer a succession of groin and lower abdomen problems, including two hernia operations, although he did play in the dramatic 2-0 final-day home win over Rangers – remembered for Scott Severin’s wonder-volley to open the scoring – to finish third and secure European qualification.
The summer before Smith’s third campaign brought an ill-fated pre-season trip to Egypt.
Though he described the friendly matches the Reds played on the trip as “enjoyable”, Smith and team-mate Michael Hart were also involved in a car accident when the driver the pair had been assigned in Alexandria crashed.
The third season itself brought the highs of the Copenhagen game.
However, Smith made a slow start to the new term due to a virus also picked up in Alexandria and was also dogged throughout by calf issues – issues which he thinks were nerve-related and stemmed from a jolt to his lower back during the road incident in Egypt.
Smith’s persistent injury problems – which would then also follow him into his fourth season with the Dons – meant, as well as missing the Bayern tie, he watched the dramatic second half in Dnipro from the sidelines.
He then missed the subsequent Uefa Cup group games against Panathinaikos in Greece (3-0 loss) and the 1-1 draw with Lokomotiv at Pittodrie, and was forced off before half-time in the 2-0 defeat to Spain’s Atletico at the Vicente Calderon.
Perhaps the most bizarre physical concern which affected Smith during his time at Aberdeen were nodules on his vocal chords, which rendered him almost completely mute for six months in his second season and required two laser surgeries to remove.
He said: “It got to the stage where I completely lost my voice.
“I ended up going in, being put under and getting this laser surgery to remove them (the nodules). They biopsied them and there was nothing serious about them.
“For a week, I wasn’t allowed to try to speak – and if you’ve ever been in that predicament, it’s really difficult.
“But then they checked me again, because my voice wasn’t close to being back to normal. I got the camera up my nose and down my throat again, and they (the nodules) were back, and I had to go in and get a second laser surgery.”
Explaining how deeply the problems with his voice hit not just his professional football career, but his day-to-day-life around Aberdeen, Smith said: “(With) professional footballers, what a lot of people don’t see or hear is the amount of talking you do on a football pitch.
“You’re always talking – giving information to your team-mates, asking for the ball, ‘shift left’, ‘you can press there’… You’re talking all the time.”
He added: “It was six months, maybe more than six months – a good chunk of time.
“We wouldn’t be having this conversation. Even with no background noise, you’d barely be able to hear me. My voice was so hoarse when I had it, then it went.
“I kind of forgot how difficult it was. It was debilitating.
“I would stop going into a coffee shop, because what’s the point? I would spend 10 minutes trying to get somebody to understand what I’m trying to order.”
Don’t miss out on great shoe recommendations!https://www.swooshdunk.com
