Dedicated football reporter is killed in M1 crash - Sports Journalists' Association

The man who was known as “the Voice of Doncaster Rovers” during his time commentating on the club for BBC Radio Sheffield has been killed in a motorway crash that also claimed the life of his wife.

Brian Bradley: dedicated commentator and writer on non-League football

Brian Bradley, who also wrote a column on non-League football for the Sheffield Telegraph, died last week when the car he was driving left the northbound carriageway of the M1 and hit a tree. Bradley (76) and his wife Judy (77) both died at the scene.

Besides working for local radio and writing his weekly newspaper column, Bradley was also a chief district auditor and a local newsagent, selling the newspapers that often carried his words.

He covered non-League football on a freelance basis for Radio Sheffield for 24 years and also provided online commentaries for Doncaster Rovers’ official website between 2003 and 2007. He refereed in Sheffield and Hallamshire FA leagues between 1956 and 1965 and 1970 to 1980.

Alan Biggs, a former sports editor of Radio Hallam, commented: “With Brian Bradley it was always about the game. Never about him. Today, very sadly, it is about him. And if ever an unsung football figure deserved a tribute it is the man who was truly ‘Mr non-League football’ in South Yorkshire.

“Brian was a friend to the game – and everyone. He was seemingly one of life’s indestructible characters, as perennial as the rich green of new-mown August grass and the smell of liniment in dressing room corridors. It is almost unthinkable that Brian – who so sadly died along with his wife Judith in Thursday’s M1 crash – will not be around when the ball starts rolling again next month.

“His name may not have resonated with supporters of the Owls and Blades but he was never besotted with the glamour of the professional game. He was rooted in the game itself, as he lovingly demonstrated in his columns for The Star and Sheffield Telegraph.”

Keith Farnsworth, the former Sheffield Telegraph sports editor, told sportsjournalists.co.uk: “He did a good job for the Sheffield Telegraph, and he was one of the most decent blokes you could meet. In terms of humanity and humility some of the full-time professionals, especially in local radio, weren’t fit to stand alongside him.”

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