RWC #35: Keith Wood scores four tries against USA

Jonah Lomu, Bryan Habana, Chester Williams, Marc Ellis, Chris Latham and Keith Wood - what do they all have in common?

Well, they’ve all scored four tries or more in a World Cup match. But, only one was a frontrow forward.

Keith Wood was a player whose fantastic technical ability as a hooker was combined with a dynamism and rugby brain which would probably have seen him be a star in a different position had he been a different build.

And he showcased this brilliantly during Ireland’s 53-8 pool win over the USA at Lansdowne Road in the 1999 World Cup, in which he scored four of his 15 international tries.

The first try came after the Ireland pack rumbled over the USA line and Wood, as he so often did, emerged from a swamp of scattered bodies with the ball under his arm before trotting back to the halfway line.

For number two Ireland’s pack put the squeeze on the American scrum and turned the ball over right on the opposition line. The ball was set back and there, as ever, was Wood, picking the ball up at the base, spying a gap and flying over the line using that brilliant combination of speed, power and a low centre of gravity.

For his hat-trick Wood, always alert and lurking on the short side at an American lineout, saw the ball knocked down by Jeremy Davidson and seized on the scraps like all great hookers do, pouncing and burrowing over the line.

The last was the pick of the bunch. Having hit his man at a lineout on the nearside, Wood lingered with menace on the touchline. As play broke down under the posts the ball came back to the right for Eric Elwood, who had one man outside him.

Elwood dinked the ball in behind and there was auxiliary-winger Wood, who raced past opposite number Tom Billups and dived on the ball in goal to take his tally to four.

Not a bad return for a big lump up front.