Smith – a league winner with Swansea City in 2000 – was warming up that day when the Cardiff fans arrived at the Vetch and – in his words\u00a0– “all hell broke loose”<\/p>\n
It was the last time the two cities met in the league and Smith recalls the game, almost as if it was yesterday,<\/p>\n
“It was all new for me. That incident during the warm-up made me understand pretty quickly what the game meant to Swansea and Cardiff fans.” he told the Evening Post<\/p>\n
“It is a one-off game. There is a different feeling. It is far more intense.<\/p>\n
“I was aware of the passion pretty quickly on the day.<\/p>\n
“Boys like Kristian O’Leary and Jonathan Coates felt the passion of the supporters as they were Swansea born and bred.<\/p>\n
“Before that game I felt the passion bounce off them, after it I shared it.<\/p>\n
“The players have to be focused in these type of games,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The fans will have looked at this game and nothing else for the past two months.<\/p>\n
“Some games can be played at 100mph, but the players have to contain their excitement.<\/p>\n
“They can’t run around like headless chickens. Some players will play with their hearts rather than heads.<\/p>\n
“If you keep a cool head then you have a better chance of winning.<\/p>\n
“The fans can play such a big part. If they create a huge atmosphere then the pace of the game will speed up.”<\/p>\n
And a prediction?<\/p>\n
“Roberto has done a great job at the club and I think Swansea can get a play-off spot,” said Smith.<\/p>\n
“As for this weekend, I am going for a Swansea win, of course. I think it will be 2-1.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Smith – a league winner with Swansea City in 2000 – was warming up that day when the Cardiff fans arrived at the Vetch and – in his words\u00a0– “all hell broke loose” It was the last time the two cities met in the league and Smith recalls the game, almost as if it was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":453,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/453"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15714\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}