Record-breaking football star Chris Wood didn't always stand out on the field but his passion was there from the beginning. And so, discovers Gill Higgins, were the people he needed to nurture it.
A life-size poster of a goal-scoring Chris Woods hangs in the corridor of the changing rooms at Onehunga Sports Football Club. This is the club where Wood, at just two-years-old, watched as his Dad Grant and his uncles fought it out on the muddy pitches.
The problem was, even as a toddler, Wood thought he could join in and would run onto the pitch with the teams of grown men. His mum, Julie Wood, still laughs at the memory. “Sounds like abuse but I did dislocate his shoulder twice by grabbing his hand to pull him back. In the end I had to put him in dungarees so that I could grab the back of those to keep him off the pitch.”
The family were very involved in the club. Julie remembers just how all-consuming it was. “I was treasurer, Grant was secretary, we ran the bar, I did the cleaning.”
In other words, Wood grew up immersed in grassroots football. The kind run by people who stack chairs, wash uniforms, pour drinks, mark fields and keep community clubs alive for the next generation.
At age four, Wood, along with older sister Chelsey, joined a team and never looked back.
Football became his obsession from that young age through to now as a 34-year-old striker for English Premier League club Nottingham Forest, and as captain of the All Whites.
But if you think the X factor must have been apparent straight away, think again. Wood’s parents and others at the club say there was no neat, early script announcing he would become New Zealand’s greatest ever men’s goalscorer. No one was standing on the sidelines declaring a future star had arrived.
Club stalwart Bill Raffles was managing teams when Wood first started to play. I asked him if he thought Wood would be a star. He’s not quite sure how to answer – “It’s hard to say really” – but then goes for the direct approach. “At that age, he wasn’t a class player as such.”
Grant offers an assessment many young players and parents may find reassuring. "When they’re young, you just don’t know. It’s like juggling a ball, a lot of people say if you can juggle a ball on your feet, you can do really well, but when Christopher was young he couldn’t juggle.”
For all the mythology that builds around elite athletes, there are a few key factors that stand the test of time: determination, environment and love of the game.
As Raffles puts it, “some are slow developers, but you could see Wood was determined about what he wanted to do.”
Key influences at the right moment
There were also key influences at the right moments. One of them was former All White Wynton Rufer, whose academy gave Chris and sister Chelsey another pathway to pursue their football ambitions. Julie remembers asking Rufer whether all the time, money and training were worth it.
Rufer told her it was impossible to know, then added that footballers needed more than raw ability: they’ve got to be the whole package, to be able to listen to the coach, and be dedicated. Chris could listen. Chris was dedicated.
Then came another formative chapter when the family moved to Cambridge. There, coach Mike Groom, another former All White, introduced a radically different flavour of football.
“I was running a samba-style football school that had, at its essence, a Brazilian flavour,” he says.
This was not football with rigid systems and shouted instructions. It was movement, rhythm, joy and improvisation. Julie remembers, “he had music playing all the time, trying to get children to free up their hips because we’re quite rigid here in New Zealand”.
The sessions were fast, technical and fun. “So we would play futsal fast … quick futsal with quick movements, quick speed,” Groom says.
Grant saw the value in that instantly. “If kids aren’t enjoying it, there’s no point, so it’s got to be fun the whole time.”
Chelsey, who built her own football career and played at two Under-20 World Cups, remembers those sessions as tough but exhilarating. “They were always so hard so you would come off sweaty but happy,” she says.
And like many siblings, she also remembers the small personal bargains that helped shape those early years. She was the only girl at those sessions, so she struck a deal with her brother, telling him, “I’ll give you a dollar if you be my partner”.
'He had an instinct you couldn't coach'
For all the stories about elite sport being ruthless and individual, the making of Chris Wood sounds deeply collective. A sister beside him. Parents ferrying children to trainings. Volunteers keeping the club running. Coaches trying to spark expression.
But as time wore on, something unmistakable became apparent in Wood himself. Groom saw it clearly. “He just wanted to score goals, that was part of his DNA, you know, he had the instinct that you couldn't coach. He just knew. He just could sense it.”
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That instinct would carry him from local school competitions to Waikato men’s teams and on to the much-revered English Premier League. He was still just a teenager when he signed with Midlands club West Bromwich Albion. He got to play in his first Fifa World Cup, at the tender age of 18.
It was a swift move from over-enthusiastic toddler to being the face on the wall inspiring the next generation. But the people who influenced him believe those early years were the best start. As Groom puts it, “so much goes back to childhood, you know”.
Both the FIFA Series this weekend and the FIFA World Cup in June and July will be available to watch on TVNZ+
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