Ben Waine's Journey from Struggles to World Cup Aspirations

Ben Waine was nowhere near a World Cup when he slipped out of the Port Vale squad. Not on the bench. Not in the plans. Just a 25-year-old striker a long way from Wellington, wondering what had happened to the dream.

“It has been a tough season. I'm not going to lie,” he tells Sky Sports. There were weeks when his name did not even make the team sheet. “It sucked in the moment,” he says, and you know he means it. The humiliation. The doubt. The empty Saturdays.

Yet that spell in the wilderness became the turning point.

From the stands to the spotlight

Waine stayed on the training pitch. Stayed late. Came in early. One-on-one sessions with individual coach Simon Ireland became his lifeline. Every day, the same routine. One or two specific finishes, over and over, stripped back to pure technique.

“Literally, every day we would work on one or two types of finish, just focusing on the technique,” he explains. He was chasing something simple but elusive: calm.

He had been snatching at chances, desperate to impress, rushing everything in front of goal. The work with Ireland was about rewiring that instinct. “Trying to find that composure, that finish that I could go to without thinking so it became instinct.”

The pressure eased. “It gave me real purpose. I knew what I was working towards. Even when things were not going well, I had that to work on. It made me relax a bit more.”

The reward came on a night Port Vale supporters will talk about for years. Sunderland in the FA Cup. A Championship club, big away following, real jeopardy. Waine rose and guided a looping header back across the goalkeeper. The winning goal. The upset sealed.

That header, he insists, was no accident.

“The second finishing drill we didn't do a huge amount of but I did a lot of visualising of it off the field as well,” he says. “And the one goal that I actually pictured was that Sunderland goal, the kind of loopy header back across the goalkeeper. I had actually visualised it.”

It was not the obvious product of hours spent on striking technique. But the movement, the angle, the decision to go back across the keeper – that was straight from the training ground. “It just became a bit more natural. It was really cool to see that come off.”

And then came the celebration.

Waine, from a family of Newcastle supporters, sprinted away and froze in front of the travelling Sunderland fans with an Alan Shearer salute. One arm raised, classic, unmistakable. “It was just awesome. I had never seen the stadium like that before. It was absolutely bouncing.”

Port Vale went down. Relegation hurt. Yet for Waine, those eight goals, that Sunderland moment, the feeling of being central again – they changed the trajectory of his season. “I kind of took it with both hands,” he says. “It sounds silly but I actually enjoyed playing my football again.”

The hard road from Wellington

Enjoyment had not always been there since he left Wellington Phoenix for Plymouth Argyle in January 2023. The move to Devon was a leap into the unknown. League One, new country, new style, no guarantees.

“I knew the jump to League One would be big. Not technically, but in terms of intensity and physicality, the adjustment was massive,” he says. Then Plymouth went up. Suddenly, he was a Championship striker.

“And then you get this amazing promotion and you are playing Championship football all of a sudden. It almost came too quickly.”

He did find the net. Twice in the Championship, including a goal at Elland Road against Leeds United. But minutes became scarce. A loan to Mansfield followed, a supposed chance to reset. It never really started.

“That just did not work out at all,” he admits.

The easy option lurked in the background: go home. Back to New Zealand, back to familiarity, back to being wanted. He refused.

“I promised myself that however hard it got I was not going to go back. That would have been the easy option. I stuck it out and have come out of it as a better player and a better person.”

Now that stubbornness has carried him to the brink of a World Cup.

From the Olympics to the biggest stage

Waine is no stranger to major tournaments. He has already played in two Olympic Games for New Zealand. One memory stands out. “France in the Velodrome was an awesome game to be a part of.” The scale, the noise, the sense of occasion – all of it lodged in his mind.

But this is different. “It is going to be another level up,” he says of the World Cup. Another level of scrutiny. Another level of pressure. Another level of opportunity.

New Zealand have been feeling that step up in their preparation. Waine scored in a 4-1 win over Chile in March, a reminder of his threat on this stage. Around that, though, came defeats to Colombia, Ecuador and Finland, followed by losses to Haiti and England.

“You have to realise that when we are stepping up and playing harder opposition, we cannot expect the results to be perfect,” he says. The lesson has been mental as much as tactical. “We have had to mentally adjust.”

For Waine, there is another adjustment on the horizon.

Learning to live with Chris Wood

He describes himself as “a running nine,” the kind of forward who presses hard, stretches defences, hunts space in behind. But New Zealand already have a No 9 of global repute. Chris Wood is the country’s record scorer, the reference point for an entire generation.

There is no dislodging him.

So Waine has had to broaden his game. Port Vale offered a solution. Time on the left. Time on the right. Learning to drift, to drive, to cut in, to link play. He embraced it.

“At the start, I was a bit hesitant but I see it as a really positive thing,” he says. “It just felt really natural. I am actually playing on the left, on the right and down the middle now. It adds another dynamic, which should help my case.”

His education continues under Wood’s example. One quality, above all, stands out.

“Patience,” Waine says. “As a striker, you can barely touch the ball all game but when that one chance comes, you had better take it. He has proven time and time again that he can do that.”

One chance. The phrase keeps returning.

One moment on the world stage

New Zealand open their World Cup against Iran, then face Egypt and Belgium. It is a group that carries danger but not despair. The giants are there, but so is a sliver of daylight.

“My first thought was that we have actually got a chance here,” Waine says. They know how the world sees them – underdogs, outsiders, a footnote in someone else’s story. They do not intend to play that role.

“Everyone sees us as underdogs but we want to take the opportunity that is in front of us. We want to get our first win on the world stage and we want to get out of the group for the first time ever.”

He laughs when the topic of Mohamed Salah’s shirt comes up. “I am assuming there will be a few people pulling rank,” he says. Seniority has its privileges.

There is something more valuable on offer anyway. A World Cup moment. The sort of memory that lives forever in a small footballing nation. Another Shearer celebration, perhaps?

“Maybe it will reappear,” he says, still smiling.

Behind the jokes sits a simple ambition. “To squeeze the most out of my potential.” To make sense of the “lot of ups and downs” that dragged him from Wellington to Plymouth, from Mansfield’s bench to Port Vale’s survival fight, from the edge of the squad to the edge of a World Cup.

Now he has his chance. The hours on the training pitch, the visualisation, the stubborn refusal to go home – all of it leads here.

“It just has to be taken really.”