In another hair-raising incident from the news media, a well-liked soccer reporter suddenly collapsed during a live broadcast, falling into the arms of a former player who happened to be nearby. The incident occurred on Tuesday, December 2, and the reporter involved was British sports commentator Laura Woods. She is, fortunately, ok.
For reference, the incident occurred when Woods was reporting on the England vs. Ghana women’s soccer game, which was being played at St. Mary’s and was the end of the 2025 season. The English team managed to pull out a 2-0 win against the Ghanians in what was a stubborn and well-fought match by both teams.
Woods, for those who don’t know, is 38 years old and reporting for ITV and TNT Sports as a presenter. Beloved and award-winning, she is, as Fox News Digital reported, “best known for her coverage of the Premier League,” though she also covers “the FA Cup, UEFA Champions League, and women’s international fixtures.”
In any case, Woods was doing her broadcast about the game when, all of a sudden, she just collapsed. Ian Wright and Anita Asante, both of whom were standing nearby, rushed to help Woods as she suddenly toppled forward.
Fortunately for Woods, her fellow presenter and former Arsenal player Ian Wright was standing nearby and able to help her as she fell forward, catching her and preventing what looked like it could have been a serious and quite harmful fall in which she could have hit and hurt her head, particularly given how she was falling.
After Wright caught Woods and broke her fall, the sports broadcast faded quickly to black. When it returned shortly afterwards, Woods had been replaced by Katie Shanahan, a former England women’s field hockey player. Wright, commenting on the incident the next day, said, “She’s fine, I got a message this morning. It was worrying last night, but she’s fine.”
Woods, commenting in a post on Instagram about what had happened, said that she was ok and appears to have had a virus that caused her to collapse. She said, “Gosh that was a bit weird. Sorry to worry everyone, I’m Ok, the wonderful paramedics at Saints have said it’s probably a virus, just need a bit of rest and rehydration.”
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Adding to that, she noted that she was embarrassed by what happened live on TV but is thankful that her colleagues were so kind and able to help her out, saying, “I’m really embarrassed that happened on TV, but a big thank you to my colleagues at ITV who have really looked after me tonight. And to Wrighty and Neets for catching me, and sorry again x.”
Watch the incident here:
Soccer player Roy Keane joked with Wright about the situation after Woods was safe, jokingly asking him: “Not the first woman to fall into your arms Ian?” Wright replied: “I can’t do anything around this guy!” Keane, replying with a bit more humor, said, “You’ll get a knighthood for that or something! You’ll get an award or something!”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video