LONDON –– When the Patriots’ plane lands Friday morning in England, there’ll be an ambassador on board.

“They called a few weeks ago and asked if I’d come along and act as a sort of ‘ambassador’ this weekend,” said John Smith.

There could be no better ambassador for the Patriots, or for the game of American football, on this trip than Smith, who grew up playing soccer in England, but won athletic fame as a left-footed placekicker for the Pats from 1974 through 1983, and then did commentary on an NFL highlights show for British television.

Pretty good for guy who said: “The first game of football I ever saw was the first one I played in.”

That was in the summer of 1973 in Canton, Ohio, in the Hall of Fame game between the Patriots and the San Francisco 49ers.

At the time, Smith feared it might be his last NFL game.

“All I had to do was kick off,” he said. “In practice, I’d been knocking the ball out of the end zone. But this was the first time I had guys lined up in front of me who wanted to hit me. There was a huge linebacker 10 yards across from me who was shouting all sorts of abuse about me, and about my mother.

“I’d been told that, when I was ready to kick, I should wave to the guy in the vest at the other end of the field. But, when I waved, he wouldn’t blow his whistle. I had no clue then that television could hold up the game.

“And, all this time, that linebacker was yelling things at me. Finally, the whistle blew. I was supposed to signal to my teammates when I was about to kick, but I just took off, running toward the ball. When I did, the other guys hadn’t moved. The ball barely stayed in bounds, around the 20-yard line.

“The game was televised, and my wife, Vivian, was watching, back in Massachusetts. Howard Cosell was one of the announcers, and he said: ‘The Patriots brought this kid over from England and it looks as if he’ll be on the first boat back.’ ”

But Smith stuck around, although Cosell was partially right.

“They cut me the next day,” Smith said.

The Patriots didn’t give up on him, however.

“They told me: ‘We think you have talent, but you don’t know what’s going on.’ ”

In order that Smith might learn about the game, the Patriots wanted him to spend a season kicking for the New England Colonials –– an Atlantic Coast Football League team coached by former Pats quarterback Tom Yewcic.

The Colonials won the ACFL title that year and, the following season, the Patriots again brought Smith to training camp. This time, he made the team.

Smith was the kicker on Chuck Fairbanks’ playoff teams in 1976 and ’78, and led the NFL in scoring in 1979 and ’80 – the only Patriots player ever to twice lead the league in points.

He always could kick a ball.

At 16, Smith already was playing for Swindon Town FC, a second-division team in England. They expected him to leave school and turn pro, as most promising young players did. But Smith wanted to go on to university, and earn a degree in teaching.

It was while in college that Smith, on the lookout for a summer job, saw an ad for a soccer instructor at a boys camp in the Berkshires, in western Massachusetts.

“It was glorious,” he recalled. “I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.”

He came back the next summer, and the one after that, as well. One day that third summer, a camper by the name of Bob Griese, whose father (no relation to the famous Dolphins quarterback) was a vice president with the Cleveland Browns, brought a football to the soccer field.

“I told him it looked like a rugby ball,” Smith said. “He held it, and I kicked it. Everyone thought I was pretty good at it.”

Including the camp’s basketball instructor – Columbia coach Jack Rohan, who before Smith returned to England at the end of the summer, arranged for him to kick in front of some scouts.

The following spring, Smith heard from the Patriots, who said a plane ticket was waiting for him if he’d come to New England for a tryout.

“I told them I was getting married in three weeks, so they’d have to make sure I was back in time for my wedding,” he said.

Although he’d never kicked a football snapped from a center to a holder, Smith impressed the Pats enough that he earned an invitation to training camp that summer. So he went back to England, married Vivian, honeymooned in Yugoslavia, then returned to the States.

“We both wanted to travel,” he said. “I knew I could always come back to England and play pro soccer, and I also had my teaching degree.

“When the Patriots gave me a contract, teachers in England were getting paid about $5,000. I could have made about $10,000 then playing for Queen’s Park Rangers in the old first division. The Patriots were paying $18,000. I thought that was a fortune just to kick a football.”

Smith more than earned his money with the Pats, earning a reputation as one of the NFL’s most accurate kickers.

Planning for the future, he ran soccer camps and clinics in the offseason – a business that’s developed to the extent that he now owns and runs the John Smith Soccer Schools and Sports Center, in Milford, Mass.

“I’ve taught American people about English football,” he said, “and English people about American football.”

Smith was color commentator for British television the first time the Super Bowl was aired in the United Kingdom, in 1983. He wound up working on NFL-related telecasts in England for seven years, through 1989.

“We taped a highlights program that became one of the top-10 shows in England,” he said. “It got so I’d be jogging through Hyde Park and the cabdrivers would recognize me. They’d lean out the window and yell: ‘Hey, Smitty! Who’s going to be on this week?’ ”

This weekend, he’ll be serving as an “ambassador” for the Patriots and the NFL, attending a game of touch football Saturday between the British fan clubs for the Bucs and the Pats, as well as a tailgate party for Patriots fans at Wembley Stadium on Sunday.

“I’m the biggest Patriots fan you can find,” he said. “I’ve grown to love the sport.”

jdonalds@projo.com / 401-277-7340