Every footy team has a prankster, but former Roosters, Warriors and Tigers star Nathan Wood took it to an entire other level – traumatising a future superstar in the process.
Wood was the guest on the Kenty Prime Time podcast with former NRL 360 host Paul Kent and rugby league bad boy John Elias when the conversation switched to the enduring prank he took across all clubs.
‘I had a bad habit, or a good habit, of breaking into people’s houses and scaring them,’ he said with a smile.
‘Break into their house at 11pm and hide under their bed, wait for them to get into bed and and scare ’em.’
One of his victims was Luke Ricketson.
‘I snuck in and hid behind his fridge, I stayed there for like 20 minutes,’ Wood said.
Former NRL star Nathan Wood built a notorious reputation for terrifying late-night house scares
Nathan Wood admitted he developed “a taste for it” once his home invasion-style scares drew big reactions
Wood’s home invasion pranks had a big impact on Nathan Cleary when he was just a small boy
‘Anyway, he came out of the s***house and he was like talking to himself, sitting in the lounge and watching the footy or whatever he was doing.
‘He got up to open the fridge, as he opened the fridge I’ve jumped out from behind the fridge and scared the s*** out of him.’
Another trio of Roosters players, Simon Bonnetti, Julian Bailey and Justin Dooley, all loved together, so Woods decided he would get a three-fer.
And there was one extra fact that made his break-in prank extra spicy.
‘There was all these home invasions going on at the time,’ he said.
‘So they were all s****ing themselves, they weren’t the bravest blokes and they all lived together.’
This time, Wood decided to bring his previous Ricketson along for the fun.
‘They lived down on Coogee where you go down onto Coogee Bay at the top of that road,’ Woods said.
Wood once terrified Luke Ricketson by leaping from behind his fridge after hiding there twenty minutes
‘They lived in a unit and it was the middle of winter, it was freezing.
‘I couldn’t get into their unit so I said to Ricko, ‘I will climb up onto their roof there and I will pop the window open and you come up after me’.
‘He was like ‘what … I’ll wait down here’.
‘So I climbed up and popped their window, it was a little bathroom window, and I got in there.
‘I had a Scream mask on and I am thinking, how am I going to get there to come up here [to the bathroom].
‘So I threw something in the bath and it made some kind of noise and you could hear everything stop.’
However that was not enough to entice his teammates to investigate, so he went a little harder.
‘I got a blanket from one of the beds and wrapped it around my body with the Scream mask.
Before he was a four-time premiership-winning coach, Ivan Cleary played for the New Zealand Warriors with Wood
‘I just ran down the stairs going [pig noises] … and they s*** themselves.
‘Simon Bonnetti’s got the blanket and he’s going ‘nooo’.
‘I had to rip the mask off because Bonny was like screaming.’
That was the beginning of a prank that would become Wood’s trademark throughout his footy career.
‘Once I started doing that, I had a taste for it,’ he said.
John Elias then questioned Woods on one of the best break-in pranks he ever pulled, on former Warriors star and current Penrith coach Ivan Cleary.
‘Ivan and [wife] are two of the best people you could meet,’ Wood said.
‘We used to have dinner parties and get on the drink there. I’d already gone around scaring a few others.
Ivan Cleary and Wood were good friends and often had meals and drinks together at the Cleary household
A three-year-old Nathan Cleary got the fright of his life when Wood burst out of the closet
‘We were having a meal and it was getting pretty late and my missus at the time, my ex-wife, said ‘come on, we have to take the kids home’.
‘We drove down Ivan’s driveway and I said … I’ll find my own way home – and jumped out of the car and snuck back up their driveway.
‘I snuck in their house and I went upstairs and I hid in their closet.’
Wood was forced to wait and wait as the Cleary’s continued to have drinks and chat until after midnight.
‘I’m sitting on Bec’s stilletto’s thinking ‘I can’t stay here too long’,’ Woods said.
‘So I leaned over and turned up their radio, their alarm clock on the side of the bed, to full boar so the music is blaring.
‘I hear [footsteps] and I think it is Bec or Ivan so I can scare the f*** out of them.
‘Someone comes in and turns the radio off, I pull the door open and [makes pig noises] – and it was Nathan.’
The poor toddler screamed at the sight of Woods bursting from the closet.
‘He’s just got out of bed or something to turn mum and dad’s clock radio off,’ Wood said.
‘He run down the stairs screaming, Ivan’s come running up the stairs, I am there going ‘sorry Ivan’.
‘I probably traumatised him.’
It didn’t stop Wood, though. In fact he ramped up his break-in pranks, even targeting Warriors hardman Kevin Campion.
‘He was just a lunatic,’ Campion said.
‘I remember one time he broke into my place in Auckland and just scared the living p***er out of me.
