smith rejected melbourne’s offer for the 2000 nrl season and retired. he now lives in perth, is happily married with 5 children and works in property maintenance. in 2017, smith spoke about his time in rugby league saying "we were walking around in melbourne and were three times the size of everyone else, that is how they knew who the rugby league players were back then, nobody knew anything about the sport. at our first game they were cheering and i don’t think they knew what they were cheering about".