Ben Nelson (Australian footballer)
Australian rules footballer
Ben Nelson (born 23 January 1977) is an Australian rules footballer who played with Carlton and Adelaide in the Australian Football League (AFL).
Nelson is the son of famous Sturt player Philip 'Sandy' Nelson, and accordingly played his first senior football with the Sturt Football Club in 1994. He was to join the inaugural Port Adelaide Power team in 1997 as it was admitted to the Australian Football League; however, Port Adelaide traded him and Andrew Balkwill to the Carlton Football Club for Brent Heaver in the 1996/97 offseason.
Nelson made his debut for Carlton in Sturt colours—the game when Carlton wore pale blue guernseys instead of their traditional navy blue, due to a promotional deal with M&Ms. He was strongly built and played mostly as a tagger and at half back. Injuries interrupted his early career but he became a regular in the side in 1999 and played in their losing Grand Final that year against the Kangaroos. After 40 games for Carlton, Nelson was traded to Adelaide for David Gallagher at the conclusion of the 2001 season. Nelson managed 12 games for Adelaide in 2002 before being delisted.
Following his AFL career, Nelson returned to Sturt. He had been a member of Sturt's 2002 premiership team (as an AFL-listed player allocated to Sturt when on reserve), and in his first full season back at the club, 2003, he was Club Champion.
The public source identifies “Ben Nelson (Australian footballer)” as australian rules footballer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Nelson, Australian and footballer.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q4886215. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1977, 1994, 1997 and 1996.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ben Nelson (Australian footballer)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.