THE KIWI who Brighton & Hove Albion nurtured as a teenager went on to find his goalscoring feet in the Premier League although a big money move to Newcastle United didn’t quite pan out as he wanted.

Chris Wood found his chances limited on Tyneside after the Toon took him from Burnley for £25m in January 2022.

More than a decade earlier, while on loan from parent club West Bromwich Albion, Wood proved a handful for League One defences playing alongside Glenn Murray and Ashley Barnes as Brighton topped the division.

The young New Zealander played 31 matches (24 starts + seven as a sub) and scored nine goals as the Seagulls, under Gus Poyet, won promotion from the third tier.

The contribution he made then was covered in my August 2021 blog post and over several years since he has gone on to play for various clubs and often managed to score against the Seagulls.

He netted twice against the Seagulls in December 2012, when on loan at Millwall, and Poyet sang his praises to the media, declaring: “He is the kind of player we would like to bring in. He’s only 21 and I feel he will be a top, top player.

“When he was with us on loan, he was a baby but now he is maturing. He’s a man now. He’s clinical and brave and we have played a part in helping him on his way.”

Born in Auckland on 7 December 1991, Wood played for New Zealand youth team Onehunga Sports then Cambridge (2003-06), Hamilton Wanderers (2007) and Waikato (2007-08) before moving to the UK at 17, starting out at West Bromwich Albion when Tony Mowbray was boss.

The Birmingham Mail discovered it was Wood’s English mother, Julie, who made sure it was football and not rugby that Wood took up.

“Football was always my passion,” he told the newspaper. “People tried to get me to play rugby because of my size but my mum wouldn’t let me. She was worried I would get hurt.

“I was about 13 or 14 when I decided I wanted to make football my career. I thought ‘this is what I want to do for the rest of my life’. “

Roger Wilkinson, who had become a coach at West Brom, coached him for two years in New Zealand and set up a trial for him.

“I came over and they liked what they saw and offered me the scholarship,” said Wood.

Brighton were the second of six clubs he joined on loan while under contract to the Baggies. He’d been at Barnsley in 2010 and after leaving the Seagulls he had spells at Birmingham City, Bristol City, Millwall and Leicester City, who signed him on a permanent basis in 2013.

Apart from a handful of Premier League outings for Leicester, Wood had seven seasons playing Championship football, including a loan spell at Ipswich and two seasons at Leeds.

It was only when he switched to Burnley for a then record fee said to be £15m that he became a Premier League regular, scoring an impressive 53 goals in 165 appearances for the Clarets.

With top scorer Callum Wilson ruled out for eight weeks with a calf injury in January 2022, Newcastle triggered a release clause in 30-year-old Wood’s contract and paid out £25m to take him to the north east.

It was considered a masterstroke by Eddie Howe because the move helped to blunt relegation rival Burnley’s striking options and, sure enough, Newcastle finished 11^th and the Clarets were relegated.

Wood made 15 starts for Toon plus two as a sub in that period but the following season only started four games and had to be content with involvement from the bench on 14 occasions with the fit-again Wilson and Alexander Isak ahead of him in the pecking order.

Even so, the player told chroniclelive.co.uk: “I’m at a club with a great squad and a great team. You are always going to have competition at a big club and that’s exactly what we’ve got.

“We have some great strikers here. I’ve just got to keep trying to push and work hard and see if I can break my way into the team. I know I also have to take my chance when it comes my way.”

Interviewed in December 2022 by Lee Ryder, Wood told chroniclelive.co.uk: “I still believe I have a big part to play here. I have not shown my best football here yet but hopefully I can do that given the chance.

“If not, I am here to support the club and push them in the right direction. I am committed here and want to be here. Whatever capacity it is, I want to be here and help the manager.

“If it’s five minutes and seeing a game out, I am here to do it, work hard and press. If it’s starting the game, scoring goals and working hard, I’m here to do that. My future is definitely here.”

But before January was out, with the promise of more game time, he switched to Nottingham Forest, on loan initially and then permanently. In a February 2025 article in FourFourTwo magazine, he said: “It all came around very quickly.

“Forest needed a striker and I wasn’t playing at Newcastle; Alexander Isak is a brilliant player and he was coming into his own, showing his quality. You could see it when he arrived. I spoke to Eddie and he said, ‘At the moment, it seems you’re going to be third choice.’

“I thanked him for being honest and open. I said ‘I’ve received this opportunity – would it be possible?’ He said, ‘If that’s what you want to do, we can work it out.’ I really appreciated his honesty.”

Wood also told Sky Sports: “I could see the project that Newcastle were trying to build. It was an opportunity to elevate my game and potentially take me to the next step if I went in there and scored goals and done well.

“It didn’t work out perfectly, but it worked out well. We stayed up, done extremely well and then we got Champions League the next year. I’m happy to be a part of that and the rebuild of Newcastle, and where they have gone on to is fantastic.”

Rather like he’d done against Brighton, Wood returned to haunt Newcastle on Boxing Day 2023 when he scored a hat-trick for Forest at St James’ Park in a 3-1 win.

Wood was Forest’s main goal threat in the 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons but that firepower has been missed in 2025-26 with him spending six months of the season out of action with a knee injury that required surgery.