SPICE BOY SHANE DID ITALIAN JOB!
IT’S March 2005. AFC Wimbledon, nearly three years old at this point, host Newport – the Isle of Wight remix – in a Ryman South clash. The Dons boasted a shiny new addition up top; having cast the net out into the murky depths of free agency they managed to haul in New Zealand international Shane Smeltz.
Intrigue filled Kingsmeadow as the Dons heralded the arrival of the White Caps striker who had a brief spell in the Football League with Mansfield. The match, like most that season for the phoenix club, is a procession, and debutant Smeltz permeates the sense of expectation with a brace, including a belting 25-yard volley.
At the same time, Fabio Cannavaro, future World Cup winning captain and Ballon d’Or winner, is preparing for an away fixture in Verona, fresh from marshalling Juventus to a 2-1 win over Roma at the Stadio Olimpico. Cannavaro netted the Bianconeri’s first.
Football, though, has a great way of throwing people together, in the stands and on the pitch. In theory at least, the beautiful game is a level playing field – it doesn’t care whether you’ve torn up the seventh tier of English football or pocketed the world’s top player’s honour. For 90 minutes all previous accomplishments go out of the window.
Which is how, five years later in 2010, Smeltz and Cannavaro would cross paths on the biggest of stages: the World Cup.
Cannavaro, il Muro di Berlino (the Berlin Wall), had already written his name into World Cup legend. Smeltz was about to.
“We had gone for a curry one night and Steve Butler, the captain, had ordered Shane what we called a ‘chicken semtex’,” recalls Dave Anderson, the man who brought Smeltz to Wimbledon and the Ryman South.
“It was the hottest curry going, the sweat was just dripping off him.
“But he finished it and took it well, and that’s what he was like; he was a genuine, nice lad, no big-time Charlie attitude about him at all.”
Not many World Cup goalscorers can say they’ve experienced the more explosive dishes of south London’s curry houses as a form of NonLeague team-bonding. So how did Smeltz end up here?
An out-of-the-blue tip-off from an agent – validated by an old Northern Ireland teammate who happened to work for the New Zealand FA – led Anderson to snap up Smeltz on, as the former Dons boss puts it, “a ludicrously cheap deal” for the player he turned out to be.
Hustle and bustle
Smeltz had been at Mansfield when Anderson got word. Having utilised his duel citizenship – courtesy of being born in the German town of Göppingen, birthplace of fellow forward Jurgen Klinsmann – only to end up with five appearances for the Stags, Smeltz fell into the welcome arms of Anderson and the Dons faithful.
“We had him at training for one night and immediately knew we had to sign him,” says Anderson.
“At that time we had such a high turnover of players; if we signed a player for Hendon (Anderson’s former side) who had been good for his previous clubs, we knew he’d be good for us.
“Signing someone for Wimbledon was a totally different ball game. You had to see how they reacted in front of 3,000 rather than 300. You could never second guess how a player would do.”
We know how Smeltz did. Two goals on debut won the Dons faithful over immediately. The Kiwi did the business on the pitch – 26 goals in 50 total appearances as an overpowered Wimbledon waltzed to the title, and then the play-offs in their first season in the Ryman Premier.
The fans did their bit to repay Smeltz off it, turning up to a New Zealand friendly at Craven Cottage to belt out a few chants at their ‘Kiwi Womble’.
Smeltz’s time in the yellow and blue was brief. Things move quickly in football, especially in Non-League, and after top scoring for AFC Wimbledon during 2005/06 with 20 goals, Halifax, then in the Conference, came calling.
“We were never going to stop him going,” said Anderson, “but I wondered about him in that division. There was a lot of hustle and bustle in the Conference and I always thought Smeltzy would be more suited to a higher level of football.” Anderson’s hunch was right; one frustrating season up north, appearing mainly off the bench, saw Smeltz head back to the southern hemisphere – and a return home to familiar surroundings turned him from Non-League hotshot into a bonafide A-League star.
Smeltz plundered his way to two consecutive golden boots and a New Zealand Footballer of the Year award in 2007. So naturally, when the World Cup came around in 2010 and New Zealand found themselves lumped in with Paraguay, Slovakia and world champions Italy, Smeltz was the one to lead the line. Former West Ham defender Winston Reid was the first Kiwi on the scoresheet, though, snatching a dramatic 93rd minute equaliser against Slovakia in their first game.
But next up it was Gli Azzurri and in the seventh minute Smeltz, via a tumbling Fabio Cannavaro, prodded past Federico Marchetti, shocking the four-time world champions and the watching football world.
Hunch
The Kiwis had a lead, Göppingen had two World Cup goalscorers, and Dave Anderson’s hunch was once again vindicated.
The game ended 1-1 and the All Whites went out after a 0-0 draw with Paraguay as the only unbeaten side at the tournament.
Anderson – no stranger to going undefeated having been in charge for a chunk of AFC Wimbledon’s record-breaking 78-game run – was suitably proud of his former frontman and the grounding NonLeague gave him.
“It was brilliant that he ended up doing what he did,” said Anderson.
“You’re sitting and watching the world champs playing and your old Wimbledon player scores against them. It’s as surreal as the night I turned the Christmas lights on in Wimbledon town!
“My part in his development was minute but I would say the part of his game we helped develop was getting him used to playing in big matches, in front of a full house, which isn’t something you often got in NonLeague.
“Anybody that played with Smeltzy or worked with him at that time and afterwards would only want him to do the best because he was a genuinely good lad. It’s definitely a source of pride.”