How football provides huge release for Leeds United’s Olivia Smart

Part-time full-back, full-time nurse, 26-year-old Smart works the demands of the Whites’ promotion-chasing campaign with her day job in transplant and retrieval.

When she’s not kicking a ball about, she’s working towards her MSc in Advanced Clinical Practice, collecting organs from hospitals all over the country and helping to transplant them into patients.

Smart said: “It’s a pretty intense job. Our workplace since March – as you can probably imagine – has been wild, and it’s been such a change in role for so many people, including me.”

Her laudable efforts on the front line of the NHS during the coronavirus pandemic were recognised at Leeds United’s 2019-20 end of season awards in July, when Smart was presented with the Bobby Collins Unsung Hero Award by the club she has played for since she was 10 years old.

Smart, in turn, is grateful for the understanding of her unit’s management and of head coach Dan O’Hearne who both help her to accommodate the full commitment each role asks of her.

She said: “I have to put some extra work in sometimes off the training ground to keep up with the girls but I think they go hand in hand, really.

“Going to football is quite a release – getting to see the girls, and coming together as a group.

“It takes your mind off everything else, especially when you’re playing a game. Ninety minutes of thinking about nothing but football is good headspace.”

But this benefit was lost earlier this month, for Smart, her team-mates, and many other sports people across England, when grassroots football was suspended for the duration of the second national lockdown. The defender, who grew up in Kippax, said of the time since the squad last trained together: “We don’t feel too separated.

“We’ve got fitness tasks to complete weekly, so we’re all in touch with each other regularly, seeing how everyone is getting on. It’s not too bad, we don’t feel too distant from one another, I don’t think.”

Although tough restrictions will remain in place in West Yorkshire beyond the end of the lockdown, the Prime Minister confirmed on Monday that grassroots sports will be reintroduced across all tiers on December 2.

Leeds United Women hope to return to training the next day to continue preparations for the following weekend, when they travel to Stockport for their first game in six weeks.

Smart said of the Whites’ return and the prospect of fixture congestion: “There might be a few games on the bounce, but I don’t mind that.

“I thrive off midweek games under the floodlights. Hopefully, the weather will help us to get all our games in in December, and we’ll finish the league on time.”