George Bennett - Half back
Wales RL
| Heritage No | 137 |
| Date Of Birth | 08/07/1913 |
| Place Of Birth | Newport |
| Clubs | Bradford Bulls, Wigan Warriors, Weston-Super-Mare, Risca |
| Honours | Wales RL |
On New Year’s Day 1935, George Bennett became the first black player to ever turn out for a British international rugby league side and the first to play rugby for Wales – nearly 49 years before the first black Wales rugby union international. He was a junior rugby union player at Risca but had to move to England to play for Weston Super Mare RU after racism held back his career. He was still only 17 when he turned professional with Wigan and went onto become a rugby league star scoring 101 tries in 232 appearances, including a starring role in the 1933-34 Championship Final (now known as the Super League Grand Final) win over Salford. He then moved to Bradford where he made another 151 first class appearances, including the 1944 Challenge Cup win over his former club. He died on August 31 1970, aged 57.
| PLAYER FOR | P | W | D | L | TRY | GOALS | DG | PTS | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wales RL | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 6 | |||
| TOTAL | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 6 | |||
Note: The statistics tab shows all of the player’s known appearances for this particular Wales side against international sides or other non-capped recognised first class matches. To see exactly how many full test rugby league caps for Wales (or any other country) that this player has, please click the “Test Summary” tab. Nines individual player records are not shown, please click here for full details about Nines. Please also note that clubs’ current names are used throughout this website, due to the database only being able to feed one name per club (e.g. Wigan will also be known as Wigan Warriors throughout all player profiles).
