St Patrick's Neil Smith says relaxed attitude behind form surge

The 28-year-old arrived for St Patrick's 2014-15 season after also playing for Scotland A, but struggled to such an extent he was dumped to reserve grade, where he played five matches in the first three seasons.

Over a three-year period from 2016-17 the left-hander failed to average 20, but he finally found his form with a breakout 2019-20, posting 448 runs at 45.

"It got to a point where I thought, 'I can't go any worse than here'," Smith recalled of his three-year form slump.

"When you come over as an import you maybe put a little bit too much pressure on yourself, you're expected to score a lot of runs and it's obviously a bit of a hit to the pride (when you get dropped), but every time I went down, I just tried to see it as an opportunity to score some runs.

"I've just taken perceived internal pressure off myself, I've gone out and enjoyed it over the past couple of years, not worry too much about runs and just try and contribute as much as possible and it's probably paid off quite a bit."

Smith deserves praise for his tenacity because all imports have pressure on them and particularly when they've played representative level at home.

It would have been easy to pack it in and return home, but he's gutsed it out and is currently sitting fourth in the association's run-scorers with 320 at 32.

The Patties have been the surprise packets of the season, sitting third after 13 rounds.

The club was a perennial finalist, but that changed in 2016-17 when it missed finals.

And that has become a pattern, making finals just once since (2018-19).

The fact St Pat's lost not only its best batsman of the past decade, but also one of the association's best, in Luke Restall and didn't pick up any profile recruits meant most outsiders couldn't see them improving.

However, first-year captain Dean Nicholson suggested the top order just needed to find five to 10 runs extra per man and that's exactly what's happened.

"I think you could put us down to a talented group that never quite performed," Smith offered.

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'We probably worked harder in the pre-season than we had in the last couple and I guess it's helped this year we've got all the top four (Smith, Matt Crawshaw, Mitch O'Brien and Nicholson) in form and we've had contributions throughout the order, like Luke Evans has a 50 and a 30 and guys have chipped in at different times."

The Patties host Corowa on Saturday, while Wodonga is home to East Albury, New City faces Lavington, North Albury travels to Tallangatta and Belvoir faces Raiders.