Kevin McGuinness

Kevin McGuinness
Personal information
Nickname Buddha
Born 10 November 1976
Australia
Playing information
Height 5 ft 8 in (174 cm)
Weight 11 st 2 lbs (81 kg)
Position Centre
Club
Years Team Pld T G FG P
1995–99 Wests Magpies 94 37 0 0 148
2000–02 Wests Tigers 55 30 1 1 123
2003 Manly-Warringah 16 5 0 0 20
2004–07 Salford City Reds 66 11 0 0 44
Total 231 83 1 1 335
Source: RL stats

Kevin McGuinness (born 10 November 1976) is an Indigenous Australian retired professional rugby league footballer of the 1990s and 2000s. He played for Salford City Reds in the UK Super League, the Western Suburbs Magpies, Wests Tigers and Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles in the Australian National Rugby League (NRL) competition. His position of choice is at centre.

While attending Sarah Redfern High School, McGuinness played for the Australian Schoolboys team in 1995.[1]

McGuinness was graded to Western Suburbs in 1995 when he was 18 and played alongside his older brother, Ken, for two seasons.

In 2001, Kevin McGuinness, along with fellow Tiger, Craig Field, were banned by the NRL for six months after testing positive to illegal substances.[2] After undergoing counselling, McGuinness returned to premier league two months before the ban was lifted and was back with the first grade team for round 23 against the Newcastle Knights at Campbelltown Stadium, where he scored a try.[3]

McGuinness set the record for the most tries scored in a match by a Wests Tigers player on 4 August 2002, when he scored 4 tries against Souths.[4]

In 2004, after a season at Manly, McGuinness moved to the Salford City Reds. While at Salford he became a firm fans' favourite, and earned the nickname "The Buddha." He left the Salford City Reds at the end of the 2007 season, and though quite a few players left at the end of that year, he in particular, received a standing ovation, with sections of the crowd chanting "Buddha, Buddha, Buddha," as a homage to the player.

After retiring from the highest level of a football, McGuiness won 2 premierships with Wollongong Wests in the Illawarra competition. In 2011, he joined the Queanbeyan Blues in Canberra's Group 8.[5]

Career highlights

Footnotes

  1. ↑ "SportingPulse Homepage for Australian Secondary Schools Rugby League". SportingPulse. Retrieved 2008-10-10.
  2. ↑ "Six months for both Field and McGuinness" (FEE REQUIRED). AAP Sports News (Australia). 2001-03-23. Retrieved 2007-11-24.
  3. ↑ "Wests Tigers def. Newcastle (36-32)". NRL Stats. Retrieved 2007-11-24.
  4. ↑ Middleton, David (Editor) (2009). 2008 Official Rugby League Annual. News Magazines.
  5. ↑ Barry Toohey (27 March 2011). "Mateship sways Kev to turn Blue". Sunday Telegraph (Sydney). p. 86.

External links