By JARROD POTTER
DONNING the Victorian jumper and lining up against the old enemy – there’s no greater individual honour for a VFL footballer as Casey Scorpions Tim Smith found out this week.
Squaring off against South Australia – in an interstate and interleague showdown at the Adelaide Oval on Sunday – Smith, 25, was brought into the squad as a late call-up and thrived on every second of his state representative experience.
After a strong start to 2016 at Casey – clunking a metric ton of marks and slotting 11 goals end – Smith’s omission was redressed quickly after injuries gutted the initial squad and paved the way for him to join the Big V ranks.
“It was a huge honour – something that was really exciting and just feel privileged to pull it on as well,” Smith said. “I got the call on the weekend prior and I was ecstatic – really excited and just over the moon.
“Really good experience and playing with the best guys in the VFL – taking away a lot learning from them and how everyone else goes about their footy … it was just a super experience.”
The SANFL jumped out of the blocks against the VFL and from then on the Victorians struggled to match pace with the hosts.
The middle terms proved fruitful for the Croweaters as they booted away to record the 16.10 (106) to 13.9 (87) win, despite the VFL running it out until the last siren.
“It was pretty furious, fast and furious, at the start – the first 10 minutes was red hot,” Smith said. “Then even after that it stayed at a fairly high tempo … it was pretty crazy actually.
“I think we just got beaten on the spread around the ball – they ran hard forward and used the ball well, got numbers around the footy and outnumbered us around the contest.”
Smith finished the afternoon with eight kicks, four handballs and six of his trademark big marks from his roaming efforts at centre-half-forward.
While he thinks he went for one of his customary screamers in the VFL colours, not just saving his best leaping for the Casey jumper, what he takes away from it all was just being a part of Team Victoria.
“Just being out there in of itself was just huge – it was an awesome atmosphere with a good bunch of guys, and it’s something I’ll really relish,” Smith said.
Smith and his Casey side battle Port Melbourne on Sunday afternoon at Casey Fields and the high-marking forward puts the side’s success down to the unity between Demons and Scorpions alike.
“Obviously, the alignment between Casey and Melbourne is really strong,” Smith said. “The guys that are playing for Melbourne are buying into Casey and the Casey players are buying into the Melbourne team.
“When it’s working like that it makes for a really strong team.”
Casey versus Port Melbourne starts at 2pm on Sunday.
