Lewis Bradley, Wigan RL player
Photo: Keith

Lewis Bradley played 124 games for Wigan from 1911 and scored 136 tries, this is a remarkable record, averaging 1.1 tries per game, if you compare this to Wigan’s "top try scorer", Martin Offiah whose average is 1.17 tries over 159 games, it gives an idea of his achievement. I know the great Billy Boston, Johnny Ring etc., and others have scored more tries but these are averages per games played, not total scored. Of the 21 playing members of the Wigan RL Club who enlisted in WW1, Lewis Bradley was the only one to lose his life, although C. Molloy was blinded. Part of Lewis’s obituary in the local Wigan paper read:- “Quick off the mark he was often past his opposing threequarter before the latter realised Bradley had the ball. Shall we ever forget this speedy wing threequarter at Central Park? He was the idol of the crowd and it only seems like yesterday that he was dashing down the touchline, his long flowing hair blowing in the wind, those long raking strides, and that final natural swerve.” Lewis was a Driver in the Royal Field Artillery and lost his life in the Somme area in June 1918, he’s buried at Vignacourt Cemetery along with over 500 other British soldiers. Although he was playing for Pontypool RU in 1911 when Wigan signed him, he was in fact English having been born near Cinderford in Gloucestershire, a hotbed of Rugby in that part of the world, near the Forest of Dean.