Gloucester-born Shayne Bradley signed associate schoolboy forms for Southampton on his 14th birthday and graduated to professional forms at 18. Along the way, he played for England schoolboys, partnering Michael Owen, upfront.

A powerfully-built striker, he promised to barge his way into the first-team contention

but, having come off the bench four times for David Jones he developed a series of hernia and groin injuries that required surgery. After recovering full fitness he remained unused by Glenn Hoddle, his boyhood idol.  But fourth-tier Mansfield were prepared to pay a club record-fee of £100,000 plus to take him into fourth-tier football and he reluctantly left chasing first-team football.

He scored a few times when not injured, but contributed only three goals to Mansfield’s promotion in 2001-02. An ankle problem was getting progressively worse and following surgery early in the next season, Shayne’s contract was paid up, with manager Stuart Watkiss declaring his signing  “catastrophic for the club”. His recuperation included Unibond League football with Eastwood, after which he returned to the Football League’s lower reaches, with Chesterfield and Lincoln.

Retiring at the end of that season after further surgery, Shayne returned to Gloucestershire, where he became manager of Tuffley Rovers at the age of 27. He was struggling to even walk at that stage following a double reconstruction of his right ankle, but a player shortage persuaded to don his boots again and he played on for another ten years for Rovers scoring over 100 goals before calling it a day at the end of the 20017-18 season. Meanwhile his initial ‘day job’ was as a seasonal operative on British Waterways bridges, then for EON in contract management. In 2018 he was working for a facilities-management company based in London, but in April 2021 he was sentenced by Gloucester Crown Court to two and a half years in prison after pleading guilty to stalking an ex-girlfriend.