Dundee travel to Glebe Park to take on Brechin City in their third pre-season friendly and so we take a look at player who has played for both clubs, Barry Smith.
Barry Smith is a Dundee legend in every sense of the word having captained The Dee to the First Division title, a Scottish Cup Final and a return to senior European competition after a 29 year hiatus in his 11 years as a player and then managed Dundee to safety, against all the odds in the Dee-Fiant season.
Born in Paisley on February 19th 1974, Barry Martin Smith signed on an S-form with Celtic while still at school and at 17 made his debut for The Bhoys in his first year as a professional in a 4-3 defeat to Falkirk. He made 22 first team appearances for the Parkhead side, including two outings in an Old Firm derby but there are few who would have imagined when he left Celtic to join Dundee as part of the deal which took Morten Weighorst in the opposite direction, that he would become a distinguished club captain, successful manager, rack up 433 appearances to come joint third on Dundee’s all time appearance list and be inducted into the Dundee FC Hall of Fame in 2009.
Barry made his debut for Dundee on December 9th 1995 in a 4-2 home defeat to Dunfermline and at the end of the season was appointed club captain by manager Jim Duffy when skipper Neil Duffy crossed Tannadice Street to join Dundee United. It was a role in which he immediately revelled in and at the end of his first full season with the club, he won the Andrew de Vries Memorial Trophy for Dundee FC Player of the Year.
Barry would play in a variety of positions while wearing a dark blue shirt but it was his partnership in the centre of defence with Brian Irvine that formed the rock on which Dundee’s promotion winning defence was built in 1998.
It was in that title winning season when Smith scored the first of his four goals for The Dee when he scored a vital last minute winner at Stirling Albion and at the end of the season, he proudly held aloft the First Division trophy after making 42 appearances, missing only the two games with the championship wrapped up the month before.
Dundee spent seven years in the SPL with Barry as captain and in his first year he led Dundee to fifth, their highest ever finish in the Premier Division / League which equalled Dundee’s highest position since Dundee were champions of Scotland in 1962.
This fifth placed finish was achieved under the management of Jocky Scott but after Scott’s departure in the summer of 2000, Barry became the Scottish heart in Ivano Bonetti’s continental superstars and continued in his role as captain.
When Bonetti left, the man who had originally signed Barry for Dundee, Jim Duffy, returned for a second spell in charge and in an inspired move changed Barry into a central midfielder where he became a revelation. In 2003 Barry captained Dundee to their first Scottish Cup Final since 1964 and were a millimetre away from winning it when Barry hit the post in the first few minutes.
Ultimately, the day would end in disappointment as Rangers ran out 1-0 winners but with the Ibrox side also winning the SPL title, Dundee qualified for the UEFA Cup for the first time since the year Barry was born.
Smith had played in the two legs of the UEFA Intertoto Cup matches with Sartid in the summer of 2001 but this for The Dee was the real deal as Dundee looked to add to their impressive European pedigree. Smith led the Dark Blues out in the Loro Boriçi Stadium in the north of Albanian when they took on KS Vllaznia Shkoder in the UEFA Cup preliminary round and he became the first skipper to captain a Scottish side to victory in Albania with a 2-0 win, therefore achieving something that Celtic’s Lisbon Lions and Aberdeen’s Gothenburg Greats failed to do on their successful runs.
A comfortable 4-0 win in the second leg at Dens meant that Dundee were next drawn a glamour tie against Serie A side Perugia and over 2000 Dees made the trip to Umbria to see Barry lead his Dundee side close to defeating the Intertoto Cup winners who ultimately progressed 3-1 on aggregate.
Just a few weeks after that memorable European adventure, Dundee plunged into administration and Barry was lucky enough to be one of the playing staff retained by the club. The Bonetti era had brought many wonderful footballers to Dens but at a horrendous cost and as Dundee struggled to maintain its very existence, Barry was an exemplary leader who represented the heart and soul of Dundee Football Club.
After two months of administration, Dundee had failed to win any league games and with relegation likely to serve as a death-knell to the club, the match against bottom of the table Partick Thistle was as big a must win game as any in Dundee’s 110 year history. As usual Barry led from the front and in injury time struck a ball from outside the box which flew into the top of Partick’s net to secure a vital 2-1 win and no one who was in the away end that day will ever forget it.
Staying up at the end of the 2003/04 season meant Dundee could regroup and put long-term plans for survival into place and in his tenth year at Dens, it was announced that Barry would be awarded a testimonial. The following season however ended in relegation and with The Dee in the First Division, Barry graciously turned down a testimonial as the fundraising continued at a premium under the new Dee4Life Supporters Trust of which Barry was a huge supporter.
That season didn’t go as planned however and when Dundee weren’t able to get promotion, manager Alan Kernaghan was sacked and Barry was made caretaker manager with team mate Bobby Mann for the remaining two games.
The final match of the season was to be Barry’s 433rd and final match for the club and under his and Mann’s guidance, the team won 3-1 away to Quuen of the South which The Doonhamers boss Ian McCall described as “like watching Real Madrid.”
At the end of the season, Barry took the chance to play abroad for the first time in his career and joined Valur in Iceland. During the mid-season break he returned to Scotland to play for Partick Thistle on loan in 2007 and Greenock Morton in 2008 but towards the end of that year finally came ‘home’ when he was welcomed back to Dens as part of Jocky Scott’s backroom staff and take charge of the Under-19s. While doing so Barry also played for Brechin City and turned out 60 times for the Glebe Park side, including knocking Dundee out the League Cup on penalties in August 2010.
In 2009 Barry was voted by the fans into the club’s inaugural Hall of Fame with a Legends Award and just a couple of years later, the fans were checking if they could induct him a second time when he took over as manager when the club entered administration for a second time in October 2010.
With the management team of Gordon Chisholm and Billy Dodds released by the administrator, the club looked to the modern day ‘Mr Dundee’ to lead them through another difficult time.
With the Dark Blues on the brink of extinction, staring relegation in the face after a twenty-five point penalty from the Scottish League, Barry incredibly led Dundee to safety with a threadbare squad made up of just a dozen experienced pros, supplemented with youth team players, trialists and players from the Juniors’ ranks. The rookie boss took a downsized squad, already struggling on the park before administration and turned them into winners, setting a new club record unbeaten run of 23 games on the way to finishing sixth, well above safety. Even a fifty-point penalty wouldn’t have been enough to see Dundee finish bottom and along the way, Barry sent out a side that played entertaining, attractive football.
Having endured the first administration as captain in 2003, Barry now led the club through another dark period as manager and his achievements of the 2010/11 will never be forgotten by the Dundee support.
The following season, while still rebuilding after administration, Barry led the club to second in the First Division, which was enough to gain promotion to the SPL after Rangers demotion to the fourth tier. With just days to prepare for the top flight, it was an impossible task for Barry and when the club parted company with him in February it was a sad day indeed.
Since leaving Dens Barry has managed at Alloa, Aldershot and East Fife and this summer took over the reins at Starks Park where his Raith side will meet his old club Dundee in the Betfred Cup next week
Barry’s time at Dens experienced the most incredible highs and lows and while journalists often used phrases such as dependable, reliable or hard working to describe Barry, such faint praise comes nowhere near defining his value to the team or the club!
From his early performances at right-back, then centre-half and latterly in midfield, Barry developed into perhaps Dundee’s most influential performer. Few Dundee fans could have expected, following a memorable man-marking performance against United’s Charlie Miller that Barry’s then unfamiliar midfield role would become the one for which he was best known.
As captain, he was simply the modern day ‘Mr Dundee’ and encompassed everything that our great club looks for in a leader and as manager, his achievements in the Dee-Fiant season were akin to Dundee’s unofficial sixth major trophy.
‘Sir Barry’, as he is known to the fans, is a true Dundee great and after the Betfred Cup game in Kirkcaldy next week, in which Neil McCann will come up against his former skipper, manager and friend, everyone at Dens Park will wish Barry Smith all the best in his new job at Raith.
Honours at Dundee:
Tennents’ Scottish Cup runners-up: 2003
Scottish League First Division winners: 1997/98
DSA Player of the Year: 1996/97
Dundee FC Hall of Fame: 2009 Legends Award
