Norm Smith, Australian footballer and coach (d. 1973)
Norman Walter Smith (21 November 1915 – 29 July 1973) was an Australian rules football player and coach in the Victorian Football League (VFL). After more than 200 games as a player with Melbourne and Fitzroy, Smith began a twenty-year coaching career, including a fifteen-year stint at Melbourne.
A Legend in the Australian Football Hall of Fame, Smith is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential coaches in the game's history, as well as being one of the finest full-forwards of his era. Like legendary Collingwood coach Jock McHale, Smith could take young players of different backgrounds and mould them into a disciplined team. Along with his brother Len, Smith's ability to think innovatively when it came to tactics had a profound influence on the game, most notably through his protégé Ron Barassi.
Smith played in three premierships with Melbourne and then coached the club to six further premierships in the 1950s and 1960s, but his sensational sacking midway through the 1965 season (when Melbourne were the reigning premiers) gave rise to what is known as the "Curse of Norm Smith". The supposed curse lasted 57 years, until Melbourne defeated the Western Bulldogs in the 2021 AFL Grand Final. In 1996 Smith was chosen as the coach of the AFL Team of the Century.