JEREMY Smith thought the prospect of playing even one NRL game was as dead as the club that rejected him when he was 22 and couldn’t crack first grade at the Northern Eagles.

So he packed up his bags, left Sydney and returned home to the Gold Coast.

But while the ill-fated Northern Eagles vanished without a trace after morphing back into Manly at the end of that 2002 season, Smith went on to carve out a 200 plus game career over 13 seasons that included World Cup and Tri-Nations wins with the Kiwis and two premierships with Melbourne and St George Illawarra after being given a second chance two years later.

And the Newcastle Knights co-captain, who announced on Friday he will hang up his boots at the end of the current season at age 36, says he owes it all to an obscure Queensland Residents game and one of rugby league’s best talent spotters in former Melbourne and current Sydney Roosters recruitment officer Peter O’Sullivan.

“I’d made a crack at it,” he said of his time in the lower grades at Manly.

“But I made nothing of it so I just went back to the Gold Coast and was playing Queensland Cup for Tweed Heads.”

It was after a Queensland Residents game that he took a surprise call from O’Sullivan.

“He picked me up and took me to Melbourne,” Smith said.

“I never thought I would play one game let alone 200. All in all, I’ve been pretty happy with my career and I’ll be able to sit down at the end of the day and look back and say “wow, I did play in some special teams”.

Talk to any current or former teammate or coach and they will tell you it was Smith who helped make the team special.

Tough, uncompromising, a winner - the type of player his coach at the Dragons and the Knights, Wayne Bennett says you build clubs around.

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“I’m truly grateful for what the game has given me,” Smith said in making his retirement announcement.

“Getting it (the decision) out of the way now, I can put pieces in place for life after football.

“I’ve got to sit down with my family now and work out a few things and put a few steps in place to move forward and we’ll have to wait and see what comes up.”

Asked about staying in rugby league in some shape or form, Smith said:

“There’ll be an itch that I’ll have to scratch so I will have to be involved in some sort of capacity. It’s up to my family and taking on board on what they are saying to me as well.

“I still love playing the game but I’ve missed a lot of family time throughout rugby league.

“I just think it’s time.”

media_camera Smith is the oldest man in the NRL.

Knights coach Nathan Brown says Smith’s remarkable record speaks for itself.

“I don’t think there are too many players that start playing at 24 and play in four grandfinals to win two at separate clubs,” he said.

“Not a lot of people win one and then to have an influence on the Kiwi side winning the World Cup and Tri-Nations. Some people are winning players aren’t they.

“There is not a lot of players in the game that wherever they go, they generally win. There are very few of those players and that’s the sort of influence Jez has.

“The big key for me when I first came to the Knights was Jez leaving some sort of legacy of what made him become a winner and have that rub off on all the younger players making their debuts this year.”