Russell Aitken

Russell Aitken (born 19 May 1985 in Sutherland, New South Wales) is an Australian former professional rugby league footballer currently employed as the Assistant- coach of the Central Queensland Capras RLFC in the Intrust Super QLD competition. Aitken was most recently with the AS Carcassonne rugby league club in France.

Russ Aitken
Aitken playing for the Central Coast Storm
Personal information
Full nameRussell 'Rick' Aitken
Born (1985-05-19) 19 May 1985
Sutherland, New South Wales, Australia
Playing information
Height185 cm (6 ft 1 in)
Weight91 kg (14 st 5 lb)
PositionFive-eighth, Halfback, Hooker
Club
Years Team Pld T G FG P
2003–05 Cronulla-Sutherland 7 2 0 0 8
2007–08 Melbourne Storm 10 1 0 0 4
2009 Gateshead Thunder 11 5 0 0 20
Total 28 8 0 0 32
Source: NRL Stats

Early life

Aiken was educated at Cronulla High School, where he represented 2002 Australian Schoolboys.[1]

Playing career

After brief stints with Cronulla and North Queensland, Aitken signed for the Melbourne Storm at the beginning of the 2007 season. Aitken made his début for the Storm against St George Illawarra in round 5 at the start of the 2007 season, coming off the bench as an interchange player.

Following Cameron Smith's controversial suspension after Melbourne's semi-final victory against the Brisbane Broncos, Aitken was selected at hooker to play in the 2008 NRL Grand Final after only a handful of first grade appearances.

Melbourne went on to lose the grand final by a large margin after having achieved the rare feat of making three consecutive grand finals. During the subsequent off-season, Aitken was released by the Storm and chose to continue his Rugby League career with French club SS Carcassonne.[2]

Aitken joined Co-operative European Championship team, Gateshead Thunder, in the summer of 2009.[3]

In late 2009 Gateshead Thunder went into administration, Aitken returned to Australia in early 2010 and will play for the Newtown Jets in 2010.

After a stint in the Illawarra Carlton League with the Helensburgh Tigers in 2011, Aitken once more returned to play in France with his former club AS Carcassonne for the 2011/12 season.

In May 2014, Aitken was appointed the Captain/ Coach of the Campbelltown City Kangaroos in the Group 6 Rugby League competition for the period of June 2014- September 2014.

gollark: ↑
gollark: You should donate £846 for GPUs, then.
gollark: As opposed to reserving the right to.
gollark: I definitely won't construct 86 quintillion simulations of your scanned neural patterns undergoing a thousand years of torture.
gollark: How am I meant to do *that*?

References
  1. "SportingPulse Homepage for Australian Secondary Schools Rugby League". SportingPulse. Retrieved 10 October 2008.
  2. "Grand final: As it happened". Fox Sports. 5 October 2008. Archived from the original on 4 December 2012. Retrieved 5 October 2008.
  3. "Russell Aitken". Gateshead Thunder. 15 September 2009. Archived from the original on 10 August 2009. Retrieved 14 September 2009.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.