Video: Les Bradd speaking about Jack Wheeler being key to keeping him at the club
Notts County’s all-time leading goalscorer Les Bradd said his achievement may not have happened if it wasn’t for Magpies’ legend Jack Wheeler.
Les scored 137 goals in all competitions for the Meadow Lane club including 125 league goals.
However, speaking on Team Talk, Les said it might have never happened if the then caretaker manager Jack Wheeler didn’t speak to him one-on-one during a ‘low ebb’.
Les said: “Jack was Mr Notts County for 25 years, he did every job you could think of.
“If it hadn’t have been for him, I wouldn’t have become the top all-time goalscorer – I was at a low ebb when my father took ill with cancer in 1968 and my mind was all over the place.
“He pulled me over to one side and I told him everything – Kettering, a non-league club, had come in looking for me and I said I was going to go there and start a new life.
“He took me into the stands, sat me down for an hour and we talked and talked and he said ‘follow this line’ and that’s what I did.”
Working under another Notts legend, Les said Jimmy Sirrel changed the way he saw the game.
Les said: “He educated me to what being a professional footballer was about and it wasn’t about going out there playing football.
“I’ll now watch a game and look at players individually and see if they are influencing the game.”
Les was the first ever professional football player from Buxton and his inspiration came from reading a certain popular weekly comic.
He said: “When you were a young boy at school in those days, you were either going to be a policeman or a footballer.
“I was five-years-old before my Dad got us a television as there weren’t really many televisions around.
“After school, you went and played football on the local park – it started as a small three-a-side game with the jackets down and it ended up 20-a-side before it got dark and parents would call everybody in.
“It wasn’t people in the game I idolised growing up – I always used to look forward to the weekly comic, Roy of the Rovers.”
Les Bradd’s autobiography Far Post: A Striker’s Tale of Scoring Goals and Breaking Records is launched at The Broken Wheelbarrow on Saturday October 7 at 10.30am.
For more from Les alongside Notts superfan Adrian Rawden and ever-present Charlie McParland, watch Team Talk tonight (September 6) at 8pm or on our catch-up service.
