Having been the first-choice goalkeeper for third-tier Brentford for three years, Paul Smith signed for Premiership Southampton. With Antti Niemi firmly installed in the Saints’ goal, there was a touch of bravado about Paul’s announcement that he’d not be “happy to sit around.” When Brentford visited St Mary’s, just over a season later in the FA Cup, Paul offered the match-day programme a more sober appraisal: while he always “knew it would be tough to get in ahead of” Niemi, he had banked on “learning a lot from him in training,” while the chance of developing under goalkeeping coach, David Coles, had been “one of the main reasons” for agreeing to be Antti’s under-study. He had to “sit around” longer than he might have because, when Niemi was twice unavailable, he was himself injured each time.

But then, a year after his arrival, Paul came off the bench for his debut, when Antti damaged his shoulder in conceding a penalty at Newcastle. Which meant that Paul’s first touch of the ball was to pick Alan Shearer’s spot-kick out of the net. “I could think of better starts,” he joked when Brentford turned up for his second full game. He now had a mini-run that included the next round of the Cup, v Manchester United. When Niemi left midway through the next season, following relegation, Paul was briefly the first-choice ’keeper. But he was soon replaced by Bart Bialkowski and became third-in-line with the arrival of Kevin Miller. It was time to move on.

Dropping down a division at Nottingham Forest was initially rewarding – in his first two League One seasons, he missed only one match. His 24 clean sheets in 46 games was the best for that division in 2007-08, when Forest won promotion with a miserly 32 goals-against – the best for the entire Football League, in stark comparison with the Saints’ 72. But there would be no happy return to the Championship for Paul.

Although he remained the first-choice ‘keeper in 2008-09, he would get only one game during the next three seasons, before joining League Two Southend, managed by Paul Sturrock, one of his former bosses at St Mary’s. In his first season, he got to play at Wembley, as the Shrimpers lost to Crewe in the 2013 JPT Final. In September 2007, Paul created a world record, by scoring the fastest goal ever – timed at 23 seconds – by a goalkeeper. Forest had been leading Leicester City 1-0 in a League Cup-tie, when Leicester’s Clive Clarke collapsed. Abandoned at half-time, the match had to be replayed. Leicester sportingly allowed Forest to kick-off and score, thereby restoring the 1-0 score-line. Amid concerns about betting patterns, it was decided that Paul would be the scorer.