All Whites: Chris Wood has become one of New Zealand’s greatest sporting exports - Editorial

Chris Wood celebrates scoring for the All Whites. Photo / Photosport

EDITORIAL

As our nation’s most prominent sporting export wraps up its campaign for 2024, a relatively unheralded Kiwi achiever continues to shine on one of world sport’s biggest stages.

While the All Blacks finish the year playing Italy tomorrow morning, Kiwi footballer Chris Wood resumes his remarkable campaign with Nottingham Forest in the English Premier League.

Against Arsenal on Sunday morning, the boy from Hamilton will have a decent shot at knocking one of the highest-flying football clubs of the Premier League era out of the top four.

Wood has had a remarkable rise to prominence since joining Forest last year – he sits second equal on the league’s goalscoring table for the season, alongside Liverpool legend Mohamed Salah and with only Manchester City freak Erling Haaland ahead of him.

He’s been knocking them in for a long time. Wood’s 77 career goals in the Premier League put him 61st on the all-time scoring list, ahead of Haaland and such big names as Eric Cantona and David Beckham.

Through a Premier League career that began in 2009, Wood has quietly accumulated a reputation as a reliable target man. While interest among Kiwi kids in top-flight European football has never been higher, it tends to gravitate to a handful of “big” clubs. The All Whites point man has been scoring for mid-table sluggers, not table-topping all stars.

It’s generally presumed New Zealand’s greatest footballing export is Wynton Rufer. The Wellington-born striker who made his mark in the German Bundesliga was a trailblazer – a footballing artist from a nation then known strictly for oval-ball deeds.

During more than a decade playing in Switzerland and Germany, he carved out a remarkable path for a player from a nation with no strong history of footballers on the world stage. At Werder Bremen, he won four major titles and was the top scorer in the UEFA Champions League in the 1993–94 season.

For good measure, he was also the standout player in the first New Zealand team to play at a World Cup, in 1982. He had played a key role in the All Whites' qualifying campaign for the tournament.

When it came time to name the Oceania Footballer of the Century, Rufer was a shoo-in.

Wood, too, has followed a path seldom explored by Kiwi footballers. When he ran on to the field in the cauldron of Fratton Park as a substitute for West Bromwich Albion against Portsmouth in April 2009, he became only the fifth New Zealander to play in the Premier League.

He took the field in all three of the All Whites' 2010 World Cup matches and – after whacking in a hat-trick in a display of typical efficiency during the 8-0 victory over Samoa on Monday night – is leading the side in what should be a successful qualification for the next global tournament.

Wood – perhaps even more than Steven Adams in the NBA – is underappreciated in his homeland relative to the stunning impact he has had in the Premier League. Nottingham Forest’s rise is the Cinderella story of this season and their progress has been built around Wood.

When he does finally draw the curtain on his remarkable career, Wood should be celebrated as one of our finest sporting exports.