Nik Kosef (born 6 June 1974) is an Australian former professional

rugby league Rugby league football, commonly known as just rugby league and sometimes football, footy, rugby or league, is a full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular field measuring 68 metres (75 yards) wide and 112 ...

footballer who played as a and second-row forward in the 1990s and 2000s. He was a state and international representative whose club career was spent with the

Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles The Manly Warringah Sea Eagles are an Australian professional rugby league club based in Sydney's Northern Beaches. The team colours are maroon and white, while their namesake and logo is the sea eagle. They compete in Australia's premier rugb ...

and the

Northern Eagles The Northern Eagles were a rugby league team, that competed in the National Rugby League (NRL) between 2000 and 2002. The club was formed during the rationalisation process of the NRL by the merger of the Manly Warringah Sea Eagles and the Nort ...

Club career

Kosef made his first-grade debut for Manly in a round 18 match of 1992 against the

Penrith Panthers The Penrith Panthers are an Australian professional rugby league football club based in the western Sydney suburb of Penrith that competes in the NRL. The team is based west of the centre of Sydney, at the foot of the Blue Mountains. Penrith ...

. He played for the club and its related successor the Northern Eagles for eleven consecutive seasons although his last three years were interrupted by injury. He was a member of Manly's premiership winning side of season 1996 as well as the teams which lost the Grand Finals in

1995 File:1995 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: O.J. Simpson is O. J. Simpson murder case, acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman from the 1994, year prior in "The Trial of the Century" in the United States; The ...

and

1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of t ...

Canterbury Canterbury (, ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and UNESCO World Heritage Site, situated in the heart of the City of Canterbury local government district of Kent, England. It lies on the River Stour, Kent, River Stour. ...

and

Newcastle Newcastle usually refers to: *Newcastle upon Tyne, a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England *Newcastle-under-Lyme, a town in Staffordshire, England *Newcastle, New South Wales, a metropolitan area in Australia, named after Newcastle ...

respectively. Four knee injuries limited his appearances at the Northern Eagles to just ten games during the 2000 and 2001 seasons. Kosef made his return to the team in 2002 after sorting out a contract dispute with the club. Kosef accepted a pay-out from Manly for the final year of his contract, and he retired at the end of 2002.

Representative career

Kosef first represented for the New South Wales Blues at lock in game I of the

1997 State of Origin series The 1997 State of Origin series was the 16th year that the annual best-of-three series of interstate rugby league football matches between the Queensland and New South Wales representative teams was contested entirely under 'state of origin' selec ...

at the time when the game was divided by the

Super League war The Super League war was a commercial competition between the Australian Rugby League (ARL) and the Australian Super League to establish pre-eminence in professional rugby league competition in Australia and New Zealand in the mid-1990s. Super ...

. He held his position in all three games that year. He played in two games in the 1998 series and was in the run-on side in all three games of 1999 at lock and second-row. Kosef made his international representative debut for

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 the 1995 World Cup in the group match against South Africa and played in three matches in that tournament. He played in the 1996 Test against Papua New Guinea. He represented in one Test against

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

in 1998, in the Anzac Test of 1999 and in all three matches played against New Zealand and Great Britain in the 1999 Tri-Nations series.

Post playing

Since retiring from rugby league, Kosef is a publican in Queensland.

References

Sources

* Andrews, Malcolm (2006) ''The ABC of Rugby League'' Austn Broadcasting Corpn, Sydney *

Footnotes

External links

''Nik Kosef'' at ''NRL Stats''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kosef, Nik 1974 births New South Wales Rugby League State of Origin players Manly Warringah Sea Eagles players Australian rugby league players Northern Eagles players Country New South Wales Origin rugby league team players Rugby league five-eighths Australia national rugby league team players Rugby league players from New South Wales Living people