It has been a whirlwind couple of months for Mayobridge man Charlie Smyth. From a rising Down GAA goalkeeper to an NFL Combine hopeful in a few months - not many would've predicted such a sporting journey, not even himself. Charlie always had an interest in NFL but the International Player Pathway (IPP) had never really been on his radar.
However, after impressing Tadhg Leader of Leader Kicking at an Irish kicking event the wheels were set in motion for the opportunity of a lifetime. Last week Charlie spoke to us about his journey to the IPP program.
It's been crazy, it's something that I never thought would happen and it's unbelievable. The support from home has been class and even doing the whole media coverage side of it has just been crazy.
This is the first year that kickers and punters can actually go through the pathway. For me, it was just watching. I was like, oh God, you know, I feel like I can do that, and watching the kickers hit their shots and kicks on the TV- I could do that. For me, because you're so locked in to football, I suppose you never really know. I didn't really bat an eyelid until the leader kicking came to Ireland and I eventually went this year, and it took me to this point.
Introducing the International Player Pathway Class of 2024!
Established in 2017, the league’s IPP program aims to provide elite international athletes with the opportunity to compete at the NFL level, improve their skills and ultimately work to earn a spot on an NFL roster. pic.twitter.com/rHM998TOlJ— NFL (@NFL) January 18, 2024
After attending a few kicking sessions in Ireland, Charlie was selected to travel to Loughborough University in October where the International NFL combine took place. From that, Charlie, Rory Beggan of Monaghan, Wicklow's Mark Jackson and former Connacht player Darragh Leader were selected as one of the 16 candidates in this years IPP program.
The quartet have been training together under the tutelage of Tadhg Leader for the past couple of months and will travel to Florida this week for a training camp before the culmination of the program with the NFL Combine taking place at the end of February and into March. The competition will be steep, however, having the support network from Tadhg as well as the three other Irish hopefuls from the program has been a huge help for Charlie.
I would've watched Rory Beggan on TV a lot growing up because obviously he's from the same province as me. I would have seen a lot of Monaghan games on the telly, but I wouldn't have known him on a personal level. Obviously you have Mark as well, he wouldn't have had the same exposure with Rory because Wicklow didn't have that much TV coverage but I kept hearing his name, and how he kept nailing every free he was taking.
Darragh as well, I wouldn't be as big into rugby so I wouldn't have known Darragh- but I actually came across a YouTube video with his kicks and thought he must have been a brother of Tadhg. Just getting to train with them lads has been unreal, we push each other on every session. We're always asking each other about certain aspects of their kick. I'm very curious to try to learn from them, and likewise they're asking me things like that as well.
We all push each other on because at the end of the day, we're in it together. We want as many Irish in the NFL as possible and what better way to make that happen than the NFL Combine coming up.
7 August 2021; Charlie Smyth of Down during the EirGrid GAA All-Ireland Football U20 Championship semi-final match between Roscommon and Down at Kingspan Breffni Park in Cavan. Photo by David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile
In terms of kicking Charlie has adapted well to the transition to a different type of football. He has always had a keen interest in kicking styles and techniques, however, through the help of Leader he has developed a greater understanding of his own kicking as well taking a much more methodical approach to it.
I remember my first session and had my first four kicks, and I didn't even know how or what way I was kicking it. I just remember I flung a leg on it and said that it flew over alright. For us as goalkeepers, the way we had kick outs and frees, especially kickouts, you have to have a load of ways to kick the ball in your arsenal. You have to be able to curl it, an instep kick or you have to be able to slice it, so it stings with the air pretty fast or even a stab so the ball gets there as fast as possible.
Obviously then for your longer ones being able to absolutely lace it. So, for me, I feel like you have those skills to kick the ball in many different ways. So whenever it came to kicking an American football, I felt like I had the swing of a knocker already. But obviously in American football just one difference I had to make was to follow through with your leg more, so the ball gets more height. In terms of the transition, the approach is to allow your left foot to go first. So actually just through watching the frees back, you don't actually know what your kicks look like.
That's why you do your video analysis on the kicks, and through watching videos back, I used to take a small step back before hitting my frees in football. Whereas it has to be left foot first, right foot and then kick. So just getting to learn, the actual stance behind your kicks with Tadhg has been very interesting and I'm very interested in that aspect of the game.
Many sacrifices have been made with Charlie giving up football completely to focus on the IPP. Although Charlie is not underestimating how huge of a task making it in the NFL will be he is confident in the group he's going over with and the coaching of Tadhg Leader.
Because this is the first year for kicking, and the first year Tadhg will be with us, this is the first group he's taken to the NFL, we're probably going into the unknown here and that's fine. If you were ever to get the opportunity to sign with any NFL team at any time after the Combine, you're not complaining. It's just been unreal, let's see what happens and hopefully we can make that happen.
The NFL Combine will take place in Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis from February 29th to March 3rd.
For more information on the International Player Pathway program, visit https://www.nfl.com/international/player-pathway.
