Ben Waine's Journey to the World Cup: From Port Vale to Championship Success

Ben Waine’s road to the World Cup did not start in a roaring stadium or under the glare of a global audience. It started in the stands at Port Vale, out of the squad, out of favour, and wondering how far away the dream really was.

“It has been a tough season. I'm not going to lie,” he told Sky Sports. There were weeks when his name never even made the teamsheet. No minutes. No hope. Just the sting of being left out. “It sucked in the moment,” he said, and there was no disguising it. But that exile became a turning point. Away from the noise, he went to work.

Every day, one-on-one with individual coach Simon Ireland, Waine drilled the same details. One or two types of finish. Over and over. Not glamorous, not viral-clip stuff. Technique, repetition, muscle memory. He chased something specific: composure.

“It was about trying to find that composure, that finish that I could go to without thinking so it became instinct,” he explained. Those sessions gave him a purpose when matchdays didn’t. A target when the rest of the week felt like rejection. “Even when things were not going well, I had that to work on. It made me relax a bit more.”

Relaxation was not his natural state in front of goal. He admits he had been “so desperate to do well” that he rushed his actions, snatching at chances. The work slowed him down mentally, even as the game around him stayed frantic.

And then came Sunderland.

Port Vale were sliding towards relegation, the season heavy with frustration, when the FA Cup delivered a night to cling to. Waine rose, guided a loopy header back across the goalkeeper, and sent Vale Park into uproar. It was the winning goal. The sort of finish he had seen a thousand times in his head before it ever happened.

“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 said. “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.”

On paper, it is not the obvious product of a shooting clinic: a looping header, guided rather than thumped. But the principle was the same. “That action of going across the goalkeeper is one we had worked on and it just became a bit more natural. It was really cool to see that come off.”

The celebration made it even more memorable. Waine, from a family of Newcastle supporters, wheeled away in front of the travelling Sunderland fans and threw out the iconic Alan Shearer salute. Hand in the air, shoulders back, a nod to childhood and to a striker who defined a generation in the North East.

“It was just awesome. I had never seen the stadium like that before. It was absolutely bouncing,” he recalled.

That goal was one of eight he scored for Port Vale, a personal revival in a team that could not escape the drop. “I kind of took it with both hands,” he said. “It sounds silly but I actually enjoyed playing my football again.” After the way his move to England had unfolded, that enjoyment was not guaranteed.

Waine left Wellington Phoenix for Plymouth Argyle in January 2023, stepping into League One and into a different world. The technical side did not intimidate him. The intensity and physicality did. “I knew the jump to League One would be big. Not technically, but in terms of intensity and physicality, the adjustment was massive.”

Then Plymouth went up. Suddenly, he was in the Championship.

“And then you get this amazing promotion and you are playing Championship football all of a sudden. It almost came too quickly.” He found the net a couple of times at that level, including at Elland Road against Leeds United, but minutes were hard to come by. A loan to Mansfield was supposed to fix that. It didn’t.

“That just did not work out at all,” he admitted. The easy answer, for a young New Zealander thousands of miles from home, would have been to go back. 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.”

The reward is here now: a place at a World Cup that FIFA president Gianni Infantino has already framed as “104 Super Bowls” stitched together into one sprawling tournament. For Waine, once frozen out at Port Vale, it is a staggering leap.

He is not a stranger to big stages. Two Olympic Games appearances with New Zealand have already put him in front of sizeable crowds. “France in the Velodrome was an awesome game to be a part of,” he said. But even that, he knows, is a step below what awaits. “It is going to be another level up.”

New Zealand have been feeling that level in their build-up. Waine scored in a 4-1 win over Chile in March, a statement result on paper, but there have also been defeats to Colombia, Ecuador and Finland, followed by recent losses to Haiti and England. The gap to the elite is visible and unforgiving.

“You have to realise that when we are stepping up and playing harder opposition, we cannot expect the results to be perfect. We have had to mentally adjust.” That mental shift may be as important as any tactical tweak for a squad that will arrive as underdogs in almost every game.

For Waine personally, there might be a positional shift too. He calls himself “a running nine”, a striker who wants to press hard and dart in behind. But New Zealand already have their reference point up front in Chris Wood, the country’s record scorer and standard-bearer.

There is no illusion about that. “Because there will be no ousting Wood,” as Waine puts it. So he has adapted. At Port Vale, he has played off the left, sometimes off the right, sometimes through the middle, building a versatility that could be crucial in convincing the national team staff he belongs on the pitch, not just on the plane.

“At the start, I was a bit hesitant but I see it as a really positive thing. 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.”

Sharing a dressing room with Wood has also given him a live tutorial in what it takes to survive as a top-level striker when the margins tighten. One quality stands out.

“Patience,” Waine said. “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. That is the theme that runs through Waine’s story. One chance to prove himself at Port Vale. One chance to turn private practice into a Sunderland winner. Now, one chance to etch his name into New Zealand’s football history.

“There is going to be that opportunity to be the hero. You just want that one moment.”

New Zealand’s group offers both peril and possibility. Iran first, then Egypt, then Belgium. On reputation alone, it is daunting enough, but not the nightmare draw it might have been. Waine’s instinct when he saw the names was not fear.

“My first thought was that we have actually got a chance here. 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.”

Mohamed Salah’s shirt will be a popular target when Egypt and New Zealand meet. Waine is realistic about the pecking order. “I am assuming there will be a few people pulling rank,” he said, smiling. The shirt would be nice. But there is something bigger on his mind: a World Cup moment of his own.

Maybe it comes with another Shearer salute. “Maybe it will reappear,” he said, laughing.

For now, the focus is simple. Keep squeezing every drop from his potential. Keep turning the lonely work into decisive actions. “To squeeze the most out of my potential,” as he puts it. After “a lot of ups and downs”, he has dragged himself back into contention, back into the spotlight, back to the edge of something that could change his life.

The chance, at last, is in front of him. All that remains is what he has trained for, visualised, and waited on for years: when the ball drops, can he take it?