With final 12 months’s starter in his place, Blake Grupe, taking the sooner kicks within the recreation, Smyth sat on the sidelines on Saturday uncertain if he would get the chance to kick a discipline aim in his Saints debut.
Nevertheless, with the Cardinals holding a late lead, and the Saints in possession of the ball as time ticked away, he sensed the sport would come all the way down to his proper foot.
Whereas the game should still be comparatively new to him, it was a state of affairs he confronted many instances down the years in his first sporting love, Gaelic soccer.
“You miss, you lose otherwise you rating and also you win,” he mentioned. “For that to be my first kick, it was the stuff of desires. You think about these situations once you’re rising up, final minute of the sport scoring a ’45’.
“If I missed that kick folks would make assumptions, ‘he cannot deal with the stress’, however I simply confirmed that I can and that is why it felt so necessary.”
Whereas the 37-yard distance could be seen as comparatively routine for an NFL kicker, Smyth mentioned he landed an try from so long as 66 yards throughout his warm-ups, with coaching camp providing a possibility to point out his vary to the coaches.
“It’s a must to try to impress out right here day-after-day to win a job so that is what I have been doing,” he added.