In the Football Echo of Saturday August 20 1955 the review for the forthcoming season included this paragraph –

“only one new player has been signed on during the close season – a 22-year-old (he was in fact only 21) centre-forward from Reading, Brian Bedford. During the year he was with the Berkshire club he played three times for the first team. Bedford played twice for Reading Reserves against the Saints Reserves and in both games

Ted Bates marked him down as a player to be watched.

When Bedford’s name appeared on the Reading free transfer list, Mr George Roughton, the Southampton manager, stepped in and signed him. Well-built and strong Bedford showed in his trial match last week that he has possibilities”.

Within a month his admirer, Ted Bates had become Southampton manager but strangely, Bedford, who in the meantime had scored 21 goals in 27 Reserve games, had to wait until late March before being given his first-team debut, taking the place of Eric Day who moved to the wing. But within a fortnight, which included four more games and two goals later, his Saints career had come and gone. Joining Bournemouth in August 1956 he confessed he “was disappointed to leave”, but Ted Bates had just made his first big signing, a centre-forward, Jimmy Shields, so the writing was on the wall.

Brian had three years at Dean Court but in the summer of 1959 having fallen out with manager, Don Welsh and working in a cemetery during the close season, he was delighted to receive an offer via a telegram from QPR’s new manager Alec Stock. Six seasons later he had become Rangers top post-war goal scorer, notching 161 goals in 258 games. As he told the QPR website in 2008

“I was a very direct and hard-running player. I could hit the ball with both feet and I was good with my headers”.

When Jim Gregory arrived at Loftus Rd and started pumping funds into the club, Brian was deemed surplus to requirements and the formation of the National Professional Soccer League in 1967 offered Brian a ‘retirement’ opportunity in the USA but his short stay at Atlanta led to him being banned for a year by the FA for participating in a non-FIFA sanctioned competition.

While in the States he had taken up tennis and became good enough to qualify as a professional coach in 1970 following his return to this country. After 17 years in that role he returned to QPR to become their stadium manager until he was made redundant in 1992 and he promptly retired to the Cardiff area to live and play golf.