6 Bobby Bradley

Bobby Bradley personifies exactly what it is to be a Whitley Warrior, fast skater, scorer of great goals and a real tough guy who took shit off no one. For 2 seasons he was able to showcase his talents on the line with Bryan Dunn and Lee Baxter and had his career year in 2000-01 scoring a high number of goals. It seemed during the second half of that 2000-01 season Whitley would score double figures in every home game and this second line would have their share of them. If Bradley scored Baxter and Dunn would have had a hand in it and vice versa. During the difficult 2002-03 season Whitley found it hard to compete with the expensively assembled Sheffield Scimitars. The 2 teams had always had riots and bench clearances when playing against each other in previous seasons, but with goons like Les Millie and Neil Able now lining up for them, Whitley were unable to compete with them on the Ice, and frustration began to boil over. One defining memory was a trip to the old Queens Road Rink in Sheffield, with the Scimitars so far unbeaten in all competitions, Whitley raced into a 4-2 lead, unnerving the Scimitars so they decided to do what they did best goon it up with a few running battles turning into several penalty minutes. The biggest goon of all was a French player (Manuel Keinlin) who got the nickname Manual Cleaning, he was easily the worst hockey player I have ever seen and spent the whole game trying to injur our players. One such hit on Bradley, which the referee again failed to call for a penalty resulted in the Whitley #25 react angrily and taking matters into his own hands. Picking himself up from the Ice, he skated very quickly behind his assailant and swund an uppercut from behind, very impressivly being able to get the power he did into the hit, the French goon dropped to the ice trying to find his teeth. Thankfully we were spared of ever seeing Keinlin disgrace our Rinks again, sadly not long after this game Bradley suffered a bad knee injury which ended his hockey career.