9 - Bryan Dunn

Bryan Dunn comes from a hockey rich family with 3 brothers and a sister who have all played for Whitley at same stage. He was part of a fearsome second line during the 2000-01 season along with Lee Baxter and Bobby Bradley. This wasnt your average grind line as this was a very productive scoring line that took a lot of the pressure of the top line of Karl Culley, Simon Leach and Andrew Carter. But they certainly knew how to fight too. Bryan was about 19 and was starting to make a name for himself as a fighter, goal scorer and great line mate to Baxter and Bradley but was surprisingly left out of the line up the following season. So while his former team mates were conquering all before them winning the grand slam that season he was forced to spend the year at local rivals Sunderland Chiefs. With a lot of that successful line up moving on to other teams Bryan returned to the club for the 2002-03 season, where he added some much needed steel to a very young side. He was a player who simply would not take any crap off opposing players, as seen with his on going feud with the Altrincham Aces team (why exactly did their captain insist on using a K instead of a C on his shirt and call himself Captain Mao?). As he matured as a player his goal scoring got better and better until he was named as Captain at the end of the decade. Bryan Dunn was probably the hardest working player I have seen over those 10 years and the amount of hits and knocks he took for the good of the team never went unnoticed, he also had a very good penalty shot record, I certainly cant remember seeing him miss one.