{"id":9065,"date":"2025-01-07T02:57:26","date_gmt":"2025-01-07T02:57:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/charlie-smyth-county-down-man-signs-new-contract-with-new-orleans-saints\/"},"modified":"2025-01-07T02:57:26","modified_gmt":"2025-01-07T02:57:26","slug":"charlie-smyth-county-down-man-signs-new-contract-with-new-orleans-saints","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/charlie-smyth-county-down-man-signs-new-contract-with-new-orleans-saints\/","title":{"rendered":"Charlie Smyth: County Down man signs new contract with New Orleans Saints"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Smyth secured his first Saints contract last March after impressing in the NFL Combine, which was a series of trials for aspiring American Footballers.<\/p>\n

As an Ulster Under-20 Championship winner with Down in 2021, Smyth had a bright goalkeeping future in Gaelic football, the sport he had played his entire life.<\/p>\n

However, after deciding to pursue his dream of playing in the NFL, he started to train with Tadhg Leader, a kicking coach for the NFL international player pathway (IPP) programme.<\/p>\n

Along with Monaghan goalkeeper Rory Beggan, Wicklow’s Mark Jackson and former Connacht rugby player Darragh Leader, Smyth attended the NFL Combine in Indianapolis.<\/p>\n

Having impressed at the Combine and at pro-day trials, Smyth was invited to the Saints’ training facility before signing a contract.<\/p>\n

While he later missed out on a place in the Saints’ roster, practice squad members remain on the books of their original teams in a pool of players that will continue to train and are on hand should injuries occur.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Smyth secured his first Saints contract last March after impressing in the NFL Combine, which was a series of trials for aspiring American Footballers. As an Ulster Under-20 Championship winner with Down in 2021, Smyth had a bright goalkeeping future in Gaelic football, the sport he had played his entire life. However, after deciding to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9066,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9065"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9067,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9065\/revisions\/9067"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}