I`d like to apologise for that 'bi-polar, my arse' comment I made about Tim Smith. It`s very common for alcoholics to be mis-diagnosed with mental illness - especially bi-polar disorder - and they run with that and it stops them dealing with their real problem. Tim strikes me as one of those people. The reason I used to get so frustrated with him is that he had such immense talent in so many areas of the game. (I hardly remember a halfback with the passing skills that he displayed at times. Same thing with his kicking game (at times). And the fact that he was hyped as the next Peter Sterling so early in his career made us expect more of him too.)
I just could not fathom why he seemed to completely stop running. The tackling bit was okay; there`s a lot of halfbacks that are poor defenders; but when your halfback just refuses to take the line on - well, they`re doomed to failure eventually. I think Tim Smith reached his pinnacle in the game and just couldn`t take it any further. He had patches of extreme brilliance, but overall, I think he`ll go down in history as only a modestly good first grade half who had a pretty short career. (Possibly due to alcoholism).
