Col Bennett (born 12 September 1950) is a retired Australian

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

player. He is member of the Football Federation Australia - Football Hall of Fame.

Playing career

Club career

Bennett played Sutherland in the New South Wales State League in the early 1970s. 70 - 74 APIA 75 - 76 In 1977, he joined the Brisbane Lions for the inaugural season of the

National Soccer League The National Soccer League (NSL) was the top-level soccer league in Australia, run by Soccer Australia and later the Australian Soccer Association. The NSL, the A-League's predecessor, spanned 28 seasons from its inception in 1977 until its d ...

on 2 February 1977 for a fee of $7,000. Bennett played every NSL game for the club between 1977 and 1983.

International career

Bennett represented

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

in 32 full international matches and 23 B-international matches, and is designated as Socceroo #239. His first match for Australia was in a B-international against a travelling

Legia Warsaw Legia Warszawa (), commonly referred to as Legia Warsaw or simply Legia, is a professional football club based in Warsaw, Poland. Legia is the most successful Polish football club in history, winning record 15 Ekstraklasa champions titles, a ...

team at the Sydney Sports Ground in February 1975. His full international debut came in August of the same year against

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

in Melbourne. After being involved in Australia's failed qualification for the

1978 FIFA World Cup The 1978 FIFA World Cup was the 11th edition of the FIFA World Cup, a quadrennial international football world championship tournament among the men's senior national teams. It was held in Argentina between 1 and 25 June. The Cup was won by t ...

, Bennett played his last game for the ''Socceroos'' against Greece in June 1978.

Honours

Individual * Football Federation Australia Hall of Fame - Medal of Excellence - 2003 Inductee * Coached Nudgee College 1st XI Football Side to the Premiership in 2013–2014

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bennett, Colin 1950 births Living people Australian men's soccer players Australia men's international soccer players National Soccer League (Australia) players Men's association football defenders APIA Leichhardt FC players Soccer players from Sydney