A true great of Irish football with a brief but memorable Lincoln City connection has been recognised in his home city.
Brendan Bradley, the League of Ireland’s all-time leading scorer, was the guest of honour at a civic reception in Derry’s Guildhall, attended by family, former team-mates and local dignitaries.
The Creggan-born forward remains top of the League of Ireland charts with 235 goals, a benchmark that has survived decade after decade. In the mid-seventies, he was the competition’s dominant striker, famously netting twice in Finn Harps’ 1974 FAI Cup final victory over St Patrick’s Athletic and later being named the Soccer Writers’ Personality of the Year in 1976.
He also topped an Irish Examiner list in 2015, ranking the greatest League of Ireland players of all time.
Bradley’s career spanned twenty years from the late sixties to the mid-eighties and took in spells with Derry City, Finn Harps, Athlone Town and Sligo Rovers. In 1972, he crossed the water to join the Imps for £6000, on the recommendation of midfielder Jimmy McGeough, who had arrived the same summer from Waterford.
Under former Manchester Utd star David Herd, he scored 11 goals in 18 games, but a change of manager didn’t work well for the forward. Bradley’s form slipped under Graham Taylor, and he decided he wanted to come home.
“Maybe I should have stayed, and I regret that sometimes,” he said. “I was home bird and I was homesick and I missed the craic playing with Harps, who were getting huge crowds back then.”
At Friday night’s reception, the Mayor of Derry City and Strabane District Council, Councillor Ruairí McHugh, saluted a forward whose record has withstood the test of time, and whose standing in Irish football is beyond dispute.
“With 235 goals, Brendan Bradley is still to this day the League of Ireland’s all-time top scorer. So many footballers came before him and so many came after him, but it is an amazing statistic that a man from Creggan still sits at the top of the charts of Irish soccer in 2025, almost forty years after he stopped playing.”
Across the Irish Sea, Lincoln City supporters of a certain vintage will recall the sharp Finn who arrived with a reputation for finding the net and did exactly that. The volume of his Irish scoring understandably takes centre stage this week, yet the Imps’ link remains a proud footnote to a remarkable journey.