Former Ferns striker Katie Rood will become a free agent after Scottish club Hearts confirmed she will not play for them again.
Rood (31) has been sidelined since April when she suffered an ACL injury and has been undergoing a rehabilitation programme at the Edinburgh club after surgery.
Main photo: Katie Rood celebrates after scoring for Hearts last season.
She has missed the start of the 2023-24 Scottish Women’s Premier League and assistant manager Sean Burt has confirmed that Rood will leave the club once she has completed her rehabilitation.
“She will do her rehabilitation at the club but then she will be moving on. so she obviously won’t be featuring for us again,” he told the Edinburgh News.
Though she had not played for the Ferns since 2019, Rood had hoped to push her way back into the national team for the FIFA Women’s World Cup.
But the ACL injury on April 19 wrecked her plans of joining the Ferns training camp in June.
Rood’s football journey
Rood first played in the United Kingdom in 2012 when she joined Lincoln Ladies in the FA WSL as a teenager, having played seven seasons at Auckland’s Glenfield Rovers.
She made her full New Zealand international debut in 2017, and signed for Italian club Juventus the same year.
A move to Bristol City followed, and then a loan spell at Lewes which became a full move in. 2019.
Rood helped Southampton win promotion to England’s second-tier Championship before moving north to Hearts in 2022.
READ MORE: Our previous stories about Katie Rood >>>>
About ACL injuries
Friends of Football writer Joan Grey has researched the issue of ACL injuries among women players in a two-part special feature:
READ MORE: Special feature: Solving the female football cruciate curse mystery (part 1) >>>>
READ MORE: Special feature: How players can reduce the risk of an ACL injury (part 2) >>>>
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