Smith reaches 100 but focuses on Royals successThursday, August 28, 2014 - 2:23 PM - by Chris Pike

JOSH Smith has taken the long road to 100 WAFL games which he will accomplish this Saturday but the East Perth spearhead is firmly focused on trying to help the Royals win a premiership for the first time in 12 years so that he can add it to his three flags won in the VFL.

Smith made his WAFL debut back in 2007 with West Perth where he played a strong season with 20 games and 24 goals at centre half-forward to end up being drafted by North Melbourne.

Over the next three years, he played 11 AFL matches with the Kangaroos but enjoyed great success in the VFL with North Ballarat as a key component of the hat-trick of premierships in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

After his time with North Melbourne came to an end, Smith returned to WA but not to West Perth and instead signed with arch-rivals East Perth and has been the key focal point of the Royals' forward-line ever since.

The 28-year-old has now played 79 games for East Perth while kicking 216 goals and winning a State game Simpson Medal and Bernie Naylor Medal along the way.

He is back in strong form as East Perth's full-forward after a slow start to the season as he now prepares for his 100th WAFL appearance this Saturday against Claremont at Medibank Stadium before then focusing on the Royals' finals campaign.

"It has taken me a while after starting at West Perth and then going over to Melbourne where I played 51 VFL games before coming back here. It's good to get to the 100 in the WAFL finally and I'm looking forward to it," Smith said.

"I'd like to play 100 games for the footy club. Ever since I came back, they have been really good to me and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. So that's probably the next individual goal I'll set myself for over the next season or two."

East Perth will enter the finals in 2014 as the minor premiers and premiership favourites and Smith is confident that the experience of losing last year's grand final to West Perth will count for a lot this time around.

Only Smith with his three VFL flags and ruckman Paul Johnson also with a VFL premiership had tasted the ultimate success at State league level coming into last year's grand final and now that experience should hold them in good stead this year according to Smith.

"Obviously last year was really disappointing and we want to make amends for that there's no doubt about it this year, but we have to focus hard on preparing ourselves right for that first final because that can get us there, and that's so important for us," he said.

"We only had myself and Johnno who had played in a premiership at State league level before last year and for a lot of our guys it was their first grand final.

"Even guys like Wulffy hadn’t played in a grand final as long as he's been around and we definitely take a lot from that experience, and hopefully we'll learn from it and go one better this year."

Before East Perth takes on Subiaco in a second semi-final at Medibank Stadium, the Royals' final round contest is this Saturday against the same venue against a Claremont team on a five-game winning streak so Smith has no doubt it will be good preparation for the finals.

Despite playing the last two weeks against the bottom two teams Perth and Peel, East Perth has done well to win by a combined 158 points which is just the way Smith and the Royals' leaders hoped their form would be heading towards finals.

"Claremont has had a really good second half of the year so it will be a really tight game, and hopefully it will prepare us well for the finals the week after," he said.

"We got together as a group a couple of weeks ago and really sat down to focus on these next three games to prepare ourselves as much as we can for finals.

"There was probably a stage there mid-season where we were cruising through a little bit so we got together and really nutted out some things we wanted to work on to prepare us as much as we can for the first final. It's pleasing that over the last couple of weeks we've put some things together."

Despite knowing that Subiaco would be its likely second semi-final opponent for some time, East Perth hasn’t focused too much on the Lions yet but Smith and his teammates are fully aware of the fact that the Royals are yet to beat their Leederville co-tenants yet in 2014.

"To be honest we haven’t looked into Subi too much yet, but obviously we have played them twice this year already and they've beaten us twice so we know they are a quality team," Smith said.

"We haven’t looked too far ahead in terms of them specifically, it's more about the things we can control but once we play Claremont we will look pretty deep into Subi and the areas we need to work on to beat them.

"They are a really hard running side and we have noticed against us they have run really hard both ways. They are also really strong at the contest with Horsley, Bristow and the like in there who can win the hard footy, and then run hard forward and back. When you play them, you have to be up for the challenge of running with them and also winning the ball in contested footy."

Smith had a slow start to the 2014 season and it was always likely to be the case following pre-season ankle surgery.

That ankle problem again saw Smith sidelined between Rounds 4 and 9, but he has been back consistently since then and built up some strong form now having kicked 16 goals the last four weeks heading into this Saturday's clash with Claremont.

One big difference this year for Smith is that unlike in past seasons when opposition defences have almost solely focused on stopping him, now with Fraser McInnes, Paul Johnson and either Callum Sinclair or Scott Lycett, those other forward targets are making his life considerably easier.

"I had ankle surgery in the off-season which threw me around a little bit. I played the first few games and then had about a month off so I wasn’t able to string games together. But I've really looked at this six-week block after our last bye leading into the finals and wanted to get up some strong match fitness and over the last couple of weeks I'm starting to find some form as well," he said.

"We probably have a lot more options up there now especially with Sincers and Fraser McInnes, and a lot of the midfielder are rotating forward and spending more time there because we have that depth. We have managed to share the load a lot more this season than we have in the past which has been good and we've been able to score a lot of goals, and share the load.

"As a forward-line we have been working on getting our structure right and when we have our talls down there, we try to isolate and get as many one-on-ones as we can. We know that teams like to get numbers back to clog up our space so it comes down to our ball movement our defence and midfield, and the quicker we can move the ball and get it in there to give us forwards one-on-one we are confident we will win more of our contests than we will lose."

Smith is committed to playing on again with East Perth at least in 2015 which should see him reach the 100-game mark with the club and then he will weigh up his future beyond that.

"As long as my body's willing to get me through I still love playing footy on the weekends that's for sure," Smith said.

"I'll keep playing as long as my body will hold up. At the end of the year I will again have a bit of a break to let my body recover and start looking ahead to next year."