Kyle Wood opens up on how pandemic hit one of Wakefield Trinity’s best ever teams

In 2023, Halifax Panthers star Kyle Wood is beginning a testimonial celebration.

Now at the Panthers, he is well loved at Huddersfield Giants and Wakefield Trinity and in 2017 he re-joined Wakefield at one of the best spells in their Super League history.

“After two injuries, I didn’t really know where I was going to go and I got a call from Chris Chester and I was buzzing to be back at Wakefield, I’m from Castleford so I wasn’t too far away,” he said to Serious About Rugby League.

That year Wakefield finished fifth which was their joint highest Super League finish having finished ninth in 2009 and he opened up on missing out on the play-offs largely due to a defeat to St Helens at Belle Vue:

“Again we just seemed to turn it on. We played a good brand of rugby that year. It went all the way to the wire and we just missed out.

“It was a team of underdogs and we had some really good players coming into their prime at the same time like the likes of David Fifita, Bill Tupou, Tom Johnstone came into the team, Matty Ashurst as strong as ever and Miller pulling the strings. We pulled together that was a really good time in my career and I played my best rugby and really enjoyed my time.

“We took that into 2018 and we played pretty well that year, same team. We just played enjoyable rugby, we enjoyed each other’s company and that was seen in the results.”

However, this all stalled eventually in 2019 and 2020 and he conceded that the pandemic didn’t help the club:

“Yeah we were disappointed, the pandemic seemed to hit at the wrong time and we never seemed to get back to what we were doing in the previous years and we just didn’t play as well and it didn’t turn out.”