Chris Wood ⭑ From A-Z since '92
Wood was hard for Leeds fans to warm to. Genial enough but lacking some note of charm, he looked like a wanly smiling tree when all fans could see was the murky forest.
This is part of my (eight year long, it'll fly by) attempt to write about every Leeds United player since 1992. For more about why I'm doing this, go back to Aapo Halme, and to read all the players so far, browse the archive here.
Leeds United got two full seasons from Chris Wood, and 44 goals, and an example of what it takes to be a goalscorer. Wood was ambitious and single-minded, and that's why he scored so many goals that Leeds were on the brink of the Championship play-offs with him at the helm. It's also why he left Leeds when an offer to go to the Premier League without them came along. The bigger surprise was that he'd ever signed for Leeds in the first place.
Coming from New Zealand, Wood's loyalty was always to his own career. He was a childhood Chelsea fan, possibly influenced by parents who named his sister Chelsey; their Kiwi father had met their English mother in London. "Dad is a big football fan and Mum is on the edge," Wood once said. As a boy Chris set alarms so he could watch live Champions League matches before school, not to support a team but to watch the strikers. His dad played amateur football and Wood once claimed to have started playing in a team for the same club aged three. "Mum just wanted to get me out of the house, I would say."
Chris and Chelsey played on a lot of the same junior teams, and Chelsey Wood represented New Zealand Under-20s. "Every Saturday, Chels and I had five games between us,” Chris told Katie Whyatt of The Athletic. "Chels and Dad went one place in the morning for one game and me and Mum went the other way. We crossed over for a bit of lunch, then on to the next game in the afternoon ... We both wanted to play football so much."
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Football opportunities shrank for Chelsey, who became an optometrist. But opportunities grew for Chris because he was a boy and because, as a six foot tall boy, his growth was unmissable. He was playing senior football for Hamilton Wanderers aged fourteen, and in one weekend he scored a goal for them on Saturday, scored a hat-trick for their Under-17s on Sunday, then on Monday scored four in a senior team cup match.
Hamilton Wanderers were coached by Roger Wilkinson, formerly of West Bromwich Albion's academy. He arranged a trial for the now fifteen year old, which led to a two year scholarship and a move to England with his mother. He scored in the youth team and was moved to the reserves. He scored for the reserves and, amid an injury crisis, was told by Tony Mowbray to get changed and get on the coach for a Premier League match at Portsmouth. There, in a no.39 shirt that was hurriedly printed for him at the Pompey club shop, Wood made his debut off the bench aged seventeen. 'He'd moved from 50 people watching Wanderers, 300 watching the reserves, to more than 20,000 at Fratton Park', the New Zealand press reported. "It was quieter than I thought it would be," Wood told them.
"I can't really explain how it has happened," he went on. "Size probably has something to do with it, just being able to train with men when I was fourteen. I have always been able to hold my own against men so that's helped me develop from a young age ... I've been training every day for six or seven years now. It's hard — just to make an academy in England is an amazing achievement."
Wood claimed later that he didn't start thinking he would make it as a footballer until he was 21, but he'd played at the 2010 World Cup by then. Realistically, his West Brom debut had to crystallise his ambition. His mum had travelled 11,000 miles and effectively separated from her husband and daughter to make league football a reality for him: Julie Wood was at Fratton Park, tipped off by the club, getting her husband on the phone at 3am when their son came on and keeping him on the line so he could listen to the atmosphere. There had to be a point to these sacrifices. When he scored a hat-trick on loan with Birmingham City, Wood said, "It was always a dream and you always have those dreams as a kid, hoping to become the best you can be and play in the Premier League one day."
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