Danny Collins

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Personal information
Danny Collins
Full name	Daniel Lewis Collins
Date of birth	6 August 1980
Place of birth	Buckley, Wales
Height	6 ft 1 in (1.85m)
Playing position	Centre Back
Club information
Current club	Sunderland
Number	15
Youth clubs
1996-1997	Chester City
Senior clubs¹
Years	Club	App (Gls)*
1998-2000 2000-2001 2001-2004 2002 2004-	Mold Alexandra Buckley Town Chester City Vauxhall Motors (loan) Sunderland	0 (0) 0 (0) 71 (4) 0 (0) 56 (1)
National team²
2005- 2003-2004	Wales England National Game XI	6 (0) 2 (0)
¹ Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only and correct as of January 6, 2007. ² National team caps and goals correct as of March 25, 2007. * Appearances (Goals)

Danny Collins (born August 6, 1980 in Buckley, Flintshire) is a footballer who currently plays for Sunderland as a defender.

1 Career
2 International Career
3 Trivia
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Career

He began his career in the Cymru Alliance with local sides Mold Alexandra and Buckley Town. After having trials with Wrexham and Tranmere Rovers, he signed for Chester City in December 2001, who were playing in the Conference. In just under three years he made over 70 appearances for the first team. It was after a successful spell on loan at Vauxhall Motors that his career started to take off.

In 2004 Collins was signed by Sunderland having also attracted interest from Everton and Sheffield United. He was initially used as a backup player to defenders Gary Breen, Stephen Caldwell and George McCartney, in his first season at the club, but still managed to make 14 appearances and picked up a Football League Championship winners medal.

Following promotion to the Premiership for the 2005-2006 season, Sunderland signed several additional players and Collins found himself out of the first team squad early in the season.

Collins started the 06/07 season as first choice defender at Sunderland, but was dropped four games into the season after being booed by a section of the crowd following a mistake in the previous game against Plymouth Argyle. Collins has since regained his place following the arrival of manager Roy Keane.

[edit] International Career

Despite being born in Wales, Collins played twice for the English semi-professional side while at Chester. Since then he has won five international caps with Wales. However, his international career was somewhat in doubt, after falling out with Wales manager John Toshack. Collins told Toshack he was unhappy that players from the lower leagues were being picked ahead of him in squads, and asked not to be considered for the Wales squad to play a Basque XI and Trinidad and Tobago. ^[1] Toshack excluded Collins from subsequent squads but recalled him in February 2007 for a friendly against Northern Ireland after Collins apologised to him.^[2]

[edit] Trivia

Before turning professional, Collins played cricket for Wales Minor Counties during the football close season [1]. In the 1999 season, he played two matches, taking two wickets at an average of 37.50 and scoring 14 runs at an average of 7.00 [2].
During his playing days with Buckley, he worked part-time as a wood machinist.

[edit] References

^ "Toshack embroiled in Collins row", BBC Sport, 5 May 2006. Retrieved 20 August 2006.
^ "Collins makes peace with Toshack", BBC Sport, 26 January 2007. Retrieved 5 February 2007.

[edit] External links

Danny Collins career stats at Soccerbase

Sunderland A.F.C. - Current Squad
2 Wright \| 3 Simpson \| 4 Evans \| 5 Cunningham \| 7 Edwards \| 8 Whitehead \| 9 Stokes \| 10 Elliott \| 11 Murphy \| 12 Nosworthy \| 13 Ward \| 14 T. Miller \| 15 Collins \| 16 Hysén \| 17 Welsh \| 18 Mocquet \| 19 Arnau \| 20 John \| 22 Clarke \| 23 Leadbitter \| 24 Carson \| 27 Varga \| 28 Kavanagh \| 29 Hartley \| 30 Richardson \| 31 Connolly \| 32 Fülöp \| 33 Wallace \| 34 Yorke \| 36 L. Miller \| Manager: Keane