New Zealand’s player of the year — all the winners

All White striker Chris Wood is the only player to have won New Zealand’s Player of the Year trophy five times.

Three–time winners have been Brian Turner and Noel Barkley, while dual winners have included Winston Reid, Keith Nelson, Grant Turner, Graham Little, Michael McGarry, Fred de Jong and Ben Sigmund.

All White great Steve Sumner received the award in 1983, the year after he led the national team’s campaign at the World Cup finals in Spain.

The New Zealand Soccer Writers’ Association, as it was in 1970, commissioned the trophy to coincide with the inaugural Rothmans Soccer League and its first recipient was Mick Seed, a key player for that year’s champion club, Blockhouse Bay.

In the early years, the trophy winner was announced at dinners on the eve of the annual Chatham Cup final.

In the early 2000s, the re–named NZ Football Media Association merged its awards with those administered by the national body.

Main photo: A 2016 reunion of past winners … (from left) Noel Barkley, Ron Armstrong, Fred de Jong, Maurice Tillotson, Brian Turner and Steve Sumner.

Past winners

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