Career
He also had a long career in the West Australian National Football League (WANFL) where he played for East Perth and coached East Fremantle. Smith was a late comer to VFL football as he had spent eight years at East Perth before joining North Melbourne. His stint in Victoria lasted just two seasons and in 1976 he returned to East Perth and ended up with 222 WANFL games.
During this time he also represented Western Australia in six interstate matches.
Smith was appointed coach of East Fremantle in 1979 and promptly steered them to the premiership. Although he was recruited as a non-playing coach to East Fremantle, he also took the field for two games in 1979 and three games in 1980, thus finishing with 227 WANFL/WAFL games in his career.
Despite a successful first year as coach, the 1980 season was a struggle and East Fremantle only narrowly avoided the wooden spoon. In response to their poor season, East Fremantle decided to appoint a full-time coach for the 1981 season (all previous coaching appointments were part-time) and Smith left to join East Perth as an assistant coach under Grant Dorrington.
As the reigning premiership coach, Smith coached the Washington state side in four matches in 1980, including the 1980 Australian Football Carnival, held in Adelaide in October.
In 2006 Smith was named on the interchange bench in East Perth"s official "Post-war Team of the Century" (1945 to 2005).