Personal information | |||
---|---|---|---|
Full name | Trevor Smith | ||
Date of birth | 13 April 1936 | ||
Place of birth | Brierley Hill, Staffordshire, England | ||
Date of death | 9 August 2003 | (aged 67)||
Place of death | Essex, England | ||
Playing position | Centre half | ||
Youth career | |||
1951–1953 | Birmingham City | ||
Senior career* | |||
Years | Team | Apps | (Gls) |
1953–1964 | Birmingham City | 365 | (3) |
1964–1966 | Walsall | 12 | (0) |
Total | 377 | (3) | |
National team | |||
1955–1959 | England U23 | 15 | (0) |
1955–1957 | England B | 2 | (0) |
1959 | England | 2 | (0) |
* Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only. |
Trevor Smith (13 April 1936 – 9 August 2003) was an English footballer who played as a centre half for Birmingham City, Walsall and the England national football team.
Smith was born in Brierley Hill, Staffordshire, and attended Quarry Bank Secondary Modern School. In 1951 he captained the local schools' representative side, Brierley Hill, Sedgley and District, to their first final of the English Schools' F.A. Trophy, in which they lost to Liverpool Schools 5–3 on aggregate. A feature of the first leg, according to the Brierley Hill local newspaper, was the "solid play of the two centre-halves, Parkes for Liverpool and Smith for the home team", while the match programme from the second leg described him thus:
In Trevor Smith, a tall and weighty boy (nearly twelve stones) who captains the side and plays at centre half, Brierley Hill have a sheet anchor. Few centre forwards have been happy against him this season and, in addition to his stopper role, he finds time to distribute the ball effectively to his forwards.
When he left school he signed for Birmingham City as an amateur, and played for the team that won the European Youth Cup (now called Blue Stars/FIFA Youth Cup) the following year. He turned professional on reaching his 17th birthday in April 1953, and made his first-team debut for Birmingham, then in the Second Division, six months later, scoring an own goal in a 4–2 win at Derby County. Apart from interruptions due to injury or to National Service obligations, he was a regular choice for the first team from then on.