Rotherham United legend Richard Wood: leader, hero … oh, and boring too!

“I'm not sure,” he said. “The thing is, I'm boring. No-one will be interested.”

I smiled and thought back to May 2018 and the mad, pounding dash down the touchline, in front of a frothing sea of red and white, when he'd just clinched promotion for Rotherham United at Wembley.

It remains one of the most iconic celebrations ever seen at the national stadium.

Yeah, boring.

A year on from his two-goal League One Play-off Final heroics against Shrewsbury Town, I'd just asked the captain to write a weekly column for the Advertiser. Despite his reservations, he said he'd give it bash. “Just for a couple of editions, mind. We'll see how it goes.”

He's back at AESSEAL New York Stadium this weekend, with his new club, Doncaster Rovers, for a richly-deserved testimonial game awarded in recognition of nearly a decade of giving body and soul to the cause.

It says much about his standing in these parts that the game is taking place 12 months after his departure and with him wearing an opposition shirt yet Rotherham fans are still more than happy to embrace the occasion.

What he did for the Millers will never be forgotten.

He was old-school hard, a defender who liked the cuts and the bruises, the aches and the pains, the multiple cracks to his crooked hooter because they meant he was doing his job.

After a slow burn following his 2014 arrival, he went on to become the most important playing figure at Rotherham of recent times.

He wasn't perfect and that was all part of the charm.

Sometimes the headers hit the back of the net, sometimes they had the North Stand ducking, sometimes they wandered off for a chat with the corner flags.

But the penalty-area carnage his utter fearlessness in getting to the ball had created was a thrilling sight to behold.

Rotherham were a stronger team for his presence, a tougher team. The opposition didn't take liberties when he was on the pitch.

Neil Warnock has made him a pillar of the 2016 Championship survival miracle and the player later flourished under Paul Warne.

A second promotion from League One came with him wearing the armband in 2020, a third followed on that crazy April day in Gillingham in 2022 when, typically, the skipper found himself in the middle of the 2,000-plus travelling throng after the final whistle before drinking the dressing room dry with his teammates.

So boring.

“I was just a kid playing one of my first games for Sheffield Wednesday's reserve side and Steve Stone smashed me in the face with his elbow and said: ‘Welcome to men's football.’ An England international putting one on me. God, I loved it.”

It turned out Woody was quite good at this column lark. Just a couple of weeks had stretched into a couple of years and our Monday-morning get-togethers at Roundwood had become one of my favourite times of the week.

He opened the door to his home life, he looked back on a career littered with famous names, he analysed the Millers present and talked of his dreams for the future.

Actually, he'd been a bit of a columnist in the past, when he was taking a distance-learning degree in journalism in his early Millers days and writing every Wednesday for the newspaper I was with at the time, The Star.

The following routine played out each week. He'd ring me in the morning and say he didn't know what to write about, I'd give him four or five ideas and ask him to file no later than 9pm and then his column, on a topic he'd chosen himself after all, would arrive never before 10pm.

He came into the old York Street office one day and I was delighted to introduce him to the sports-desk gang. “Richard Wood, folks,” I said. “As a deadline-hitting journalist he makes an excellent centre-half.”

2017/18 was the season. There were magic hats, a magic song; it was just a magic time.

By January, Rotherham were looking good for a play-off spot. Warne believed in promotion, supporters hoped for it, Woody was certain of it. He took the team by the scruff of the neck and made it happen.

His form, his influence – in defence and in attack – in the games that followed remain the best sustained contribution I have ever seen on a New York beat even longer than the one of the great man himself.

Those two goals at Wembley were the headline, but the 'Daddy Wood' banner his missus, Jade, and young sons Jenson and Graye were flying meant just as much.

That bug-eyed run from one end of the pitch to the other had been towards them.

He knew what he was and was intelligent enough to play to his limitations as well as to his strengths.

Some said he had the turning circle of an articulated lorry, which, in all honesty, was an insult to the lorry.

But no-one could compete, organise and inspire like a warrior who kept his head in a crisis yet risked losing it every time he recklessly launched himself at a corner.

It remains a huge personal regret that I wasn't at Wembley for his greatest hour.

My Millers-daft dad had died two days earlier. Yet in my heart, as I watched and cheered and cried on the settee at home, the old man had never felt more alive.

I told Woody about it and he was moved. Then he sent my mum a lovely text.

Eventually, he signed out after 167 columns over a four-year stretch, and I still miss those Monday mornings.

Not one of them was boring.