Chris Wood has had a season to remember with Nottingham Forest. Photo / Getty Images
Chris Wood has had a season to remember with Nottingham Forest. Photo / Getty Images
Martin Tyler has covered more English Premier League games than anyone else. The iconic British commentator tells Michael Burgess why Chris Wood’s rise has been one of the more remarkable footballing stories he has witnessed and also reveals his enduring friendship with a New Zealand cricketing great.
Legendary football commentator Martin Tyler is an unabashed Chris Wood fan.
Tyler has seen it all in the sport – having been behind the microphone for 50 years – but admits the New Zealander’s ascension is a special footballing tale.
”It’s just one of those stories,“ Tyler tells the Herald. “When do you reach the top? How do you go about it? A lot of people burst onto the scene – it’s fair to say Chris Wood didn’t burst on the scene in England. It’s been a remarkable journey.”
Wood’s hat-trick for Nottingham Forest against Brighton last Sunday took his season tally to 17 league goals. Only global superstars Mohammed Salah (21) and Erling Haaland (19) are ahead of the New Zealander, whose goal conversion rate (shots/goals) of 38 per cent is the best in the Premier League, well ahead of Salah (23 per cent) and Haaland (20.6).
They are extraordinary numbers, as Wood enjoys the season of his life, helping Forest to unforeseen heights. But it’s also a continuation of his consistency since he got a regular Premier League opportunity in August 2017. The All Whites’ striker has managed double-digit hauls in six seasons – a feat matched by few others – and has maintained a strike rate better than a goal every three matches, across 251 league games, which includes 57 substitute appearances.
”Having observed football for a long time, I’m really proud of what he has done,” says Tyler. “Being successful is one thing, sustaining it is altogether much, much harder. When you are not really successful at the start – despite your best efforts – and you stick at it and you become someone, that is quite something. He isn’t an overnight success, that’s for sure. He has been in England for half his life, much of that time away from family and loved ones. That is some going, real mental toughness. He is physically strong but mentally stronger.”
Martin Tyler has spent five decades commentating football. Photo / Getty Images
Tyler is one of the most famous broadcasting voices on the planet, recognised from Toronto to Tasmania. He was the voice of the Premier League from its inception in 1992 – the lead commentator for Sky Sports UK – and remained with the satellite network until 2023. Since getting his start with ITV in 1974, he has also covered 10 Fifa World Cups and worked with ESPN, SBS Australia and Fox Sports. But the Premier League is his passion and he has watched it grow into a global behemoth.
That is partly why Wood’s success has struck such a chord, given the odds were stacked against the New Zealander. Wood arrived in England as a trainee at West Bromwich Albion in July 2008, after a successful trial. He made a couple of brief Premier League appearances for the Baggies at the end of the 2008-09 season, before loan spells at five different clubs, mostly in the Championship. Signed by Leicester in January 2013, he finally got another top-flight chance in August 2014, after the Foxes had earned promotion. Tyler witnessed Wood’s first Premier League goal, an equaliser against Everton after coming on as a late substitute.
”It was the first Saturday of the new season,” recalls Tyler, who was at the match doing homework on both teams. “I was meaning to duck away to get a train and then Chris scored and put the game in the melting pot.”
Wood had done well for Leicester in the Championship but was ignored that season, with just 107 minutes of match time, all off the bench. Another loan spell followed – at Ipswich Town – before he was transferred to Leeds United. By the end of the 2016-17 season Wood had accumulated 78 goals in the Championship, from 223 matches.
“To have scored all those goals in the second tier, that would have taken long enough and that would have been a career in itself for a top professional,” says Tyler. “He didn’t start a Premier League game until just over seven years ago. He had already been in England for so long but never had the opportunity. Maybe he didn’t look the part. But to be on the threshold on a number of occasions and then be moved on, that’s hard. Most people would have given up and gone home, or gone somewhere else. He never has done, which is a great credit to him.”
A former striker himself – at non-league level – Tyler has enjoyed watching Wood’s progress.
”He has been the perfect professional,” says Tyler. “He has known his limitations, worked within them and made the most of his strengths.”
Tyler adds that Wood seems a “reasonably private person”, not someone wrapped up in the glitz and glamour away from the sport. He recounts a conversation with one of Wood’s former coaches, who had summed things up by saying: ”Unlike most players, you would never get a call from Chris saying could he have permission to do something outside football.” Tyler believes this reflects Wood’s dedication to his craft.
Chris Wood signed a new two-year contract with Nottingham Forest in January this year. Photo / Photosport
“His goals are works of skill and power,” says Tyler. “You wouldn’t say there were great subtleties about his game but the confidence that he has now – he has worked this out. The higher he has gone, the better players he is playing with – he knows exactly what he is doing.”
Tyler still recalls the reaction to Wood’s brilliant hat-trick at Newcastle in December 2023, as he returned to face his former club.
”That made a lot of headlines, mostly because it was Chris Wood,” says Tyler. “It’s not Erling Haaland, who might on a good day get a hat-trick away to Newcastle.”
Tyler has admired Wood’s ability to continually outfox elite goalkeepers with his early shots and velocity, along with his superb anticipation and positioning.
”Gary Lineker was very good on the ‘mathematics’ of goal scoring; where you should be, what percentages work in your favour and where the ball is likely to deflect in certain situations,” explains Tyler. “I feel Chris has got something similar in his game now; a lot of opportunities come his way and that’s not just because Nottingham Forest are doing better.”
Tyler has an unlikely affinity with this country, due to a long association with former Black Caps’ captain Geoff Howarth.
Former Black Caps’ captain Geoff Howarth is a close friend of British football commentator Martin Tyler. Photo / Photosport
”He is one of my very best friends,” says Tyler.
Howarth, an elegant batsman who played 47 tests between 1975 and 1985, is revered as one of our most successful and innovative skippers. He led New Zealand to 11 test victories in a six-year period from 1980, a staggering figure given there had been a total of 10 test wins in the preceding 50 years.
Tyler met Howarth through Bob Willis, the former England cricket captain and fast bowler.
”Geoff was staying with Bob while having trials with Surrey in the late 1960s,” explains Tyler. “Bob and I went to school together. Later we shared a flat in South London and when Bob moved out, having joined Warwickshire, Geoff took his place. They were great times.”
The duo lived together for four years and have maintained close contact since. Tyler came to New Zealand with his family to see Howarth in 1988 – “we went to Auckland and Tauranga” – and would have visited more often, but the ex-cricketer has been based back in England since the late 1990s.
At 79, Tyler still loves his job, half a century on from his first live call in December 1974.
”It is still a privilege and not losing that starry-eyedness about it has kept me wanting to keep doing it,” says Tyler. “To do a game is an adventure.”
He feels the Premier League has reached a new peak, despite the various off-field issues and concerns over financial sustainability.
”It is the most watchable it has ever been,” says Tyler. “It is truly magnificent. They used to say as an Englishman, you could go anywhere in the world, if you didn’t speak the language, and say ‘Bobby Charlton’ and there would be some recognition. Now it is ‘Premier League’.
”You get amazing sport, amazing skill, amazing stakes – which is also why Chris Wood has done so well. The game has got harder to succeed in. What he might have been reaching for back in say 2011, it is a much bigger reach now and the focus on [the Premier League] is so much greater.”
