Holloway's Coach Carter Shouts, INCREDIBLE Ravel Morrison & Huddersfield Promotion! | Alex Smithies

I Had Trials Once...

Sports, Comedy, Soccer

4.8 • 647 Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2026

⏱️ 83 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We're back with another episode of I Had Trials Once and this time we're joined by former Huddersfield, QPR, Cardiff & Leicester goalkeeper Alex Smithies! Alex sits down with Gaz & Jord as he discusses his football career from playing for his boyhood club Huddersfield to training with Vardy & Maddison at Leicester. The lads start the pod talking about Alex's life post football with his career in finance and helping players manager their money and not fall into the same traps we often see in the media. They then talk in depth about his early career at Huddersfield, how he became a number one keeper at just 18 years old, signing his first big contract and scoring the winning penalty in a play-off final. The trio then chat about Alex's surprise move to QPR, Ian Holloway's bizarre coach carter training tactics, how he knew Eberechi Eze was a superstar from an early age and what made Ravel Morrison so good. Alex then speaks about his dream move to Cardiff with Neil Warnock and why he was gutted he never made his Premier League debut at the club as well as what it's like as a keeper when it comes to dropping clangers and how you can only get away with one. Alex continues with his decision to become a third choice goalkeeper at Leicester City in the Premier League, relationship with Jamie Vardy and why James Maddison wanted him to shout abuse at him in training sessions. Finally, he talks about how he recently fell out of love with football before ending the pod on the toughest player he's ever come up against. 🔗 Join our Patreon below for as little as £3 a month and get access to all of the best unfiltered and unedited stories that normally have to be cut! 👇 https://www.patreon.com/IHadTrialsOnce/membership Check out the British Army below 👇 https://www.army.mod.uk/ A HUGE shout out to CAPO for sponsoring this weeks episode of the podcast - Check them out 👇 https://capouk.com/ Get 15% off your CAPO order when you use code: IHADTRIALS 🎧 You can listen to the full episode wherever you normally get your podcasts via the link below! https://podfollow.com/i-had-trials-once 📳 Make sure you Like, Comment & Subscribe & turn on notifications so it lets you know when a new episode drops. Let us know in the comments who you want to see on a future episode of the Podcast! 👇 📲 Follow us on social! ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Twitter: https://twitter.com/IHadTrialsOnce Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ihadtrialsonce TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ihadtrialsonce Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IHadTrialsOncePodcast/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 0:00 Intro with Alex Smithies 6:30 Life since retiring 12:25 Early life at Huddersfield 16:30 England youth team 19:31 Breaking through at Huddersfield 24:55 Dealing with big injuries 26:10 Huddersfield play-off final 32:39 Signing first big contract 39:55 Surprise QPR move 46:07 Working with Neil Warnock 48:37 Incredible Ravel Morrison 52:10 Ian Holloway’s coach Carter tactics 54:10 Premier League dream move 57:25 Neil Harris relationship 58:58 Dropping a clanger 1:01:15 Tough centre backs 1:04:11 Life as a 3rd choice keeper 1:16:50 Falling out of love with football Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Football, it's in your DNA.
0:02.0	And at Spreadex Sports, new customers can earn up to 80 pound in free bets
0:06.0	after placing a 10-pound World Cup outright bet.
0:09.0	Get an initial 10-pound free fixed odds bet and a further free 10-pound bet
0:13.0	for every game your Chosen Nation wins.
0:15.0	Visit Spreadex.com slash DNA for full T's and C's.
0:19.0	SpreadX Sports, it's in our DNA. 18 plus scamblerware.org. First World Cup at Redbet only qualifies. Free bets cap to £80. Free bet stakes not included in any winnings. Free bets must be claimed within 14 days. This episode is brought to you by the British Army recruitment. So this is a big one for me. As obviously you know, I was in the armed forces and it helped me a lot when I came out of football and didn't really know what I was doing and trying to find a purpose. So as well as this, you might not know how exciting and challenging a career can be in the army. When I was in the armed forces, we used to play a lot of military football and every Wednesday
0:55.5	would meet up and play against other bases around the country and it was brilliant.
1:00.6	And there's thousands of registered players across all levels from local league style matches
1:06.3	right through to international matches.
1:09.6	So I remember playing against like the Thailand military base
1:13.4	and flying out there and it was brilliant. The Army is also part FA affiliated with its own
1:19.5	teams competing across the country. They'll even fund your qualifications and courses to the
1:24.6	highest level. If you want to become a professional coach, do your badges,
1:29.0	be a referee. What they'll do if you want to play football as well is build it around your
1:34.1	everyday life. So I used to be a PTI. So I'd have an everyday job. And then at the weekends,
1:40.9	I'd play in the National League and I'd get paid to play football as well and
1:44.5	the military helped structure that as well so I was getting my education my qualifications doing
1:50.6	my job but also they were helping me play football as well at the weekends which was brilliant
1:55.3	and obviously you don't just need to to play football that can be any sport. We did rugby, hockey, boxing,
2:03.5	basketball, so whatever you're into, the military will work around it. If like myself,
2:09.5	you're looking to go on and hopefully play football after the army, loads of soldiers go on
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 9 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from I Had Trials Once..., and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of I Had Trials Once... and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.