I like to think I have a fair knowledge of players who represented City before I first started supporting the club in 1963, but must admit the name Brayley Reynolds meant nothing to me until a year or two ago when I came across it while looking for players I could use for a seven decades of City v jacks matches quiz.
Given this lack of knowledge of the player, I would probably not have written a piece marking his passing this week, but as Feedback contributor Dai Woosnam had given his recollections of the player in a reply to one of my recent stories, I decided to ask him if he was happy for me to use what he said in an obituary piece for Brayley.
Dai has said yes to my request and so here are his thoughts on someone who represented City between 1956 to 1959 – Dai makes quite a claim about Brayley in his tribute seen below.
“I remember the young Brayley playing very promisingly for Cardiff, but with Derek Tapscott and Joe Bonson becoming first choices at inside forward, and the emergence of the great 18 year old Graham Moore (soon to be signed by Tommy Docherty, and shortly after by Matt Busby, who took him from Chelsea to form a front three with Bobby Charlton and Denis Law), Brayley asked for a transfer and the Swans pounced in the close season before Cardiff’s marvellous 1959-60 promotion campaign.
Brayley was a Cardiff fan from his boyhood in Fleur-de-Lys (very much in the Cardiff City catchment area) but that did not stop him punishing us that first season as a Swan. On 26th of March 1960, I was one of a few thousand Cardiff City fans who made it to the Vetch Field making up a crowd of over 24,000… Swansea Town’s biggest crowd that season. We needed just 5 points from the remaining 7 games to guarantee promotion to Division One (the Premier League of the day).
The first half went divinely well for us… we were 3-0 up at half time. But whatever it was that Trevor Morris said to his team, it certainly worked, for the second half saw a Swansea team rejuvenated. They rocked us with three goals in six minutes… and Brayley scored two of them. And then, if my memory is not playing tricks on me, it was Brayley who hit the bar just before the end. He was that close to a hat-trick… and a Town win.
And on the ‘football special’ steam train back through the Abergwynfi to Blaencwm Tunnel to my home in Porth, all us Rhondda Valleys Bluebirds fans breathed a huge sigh of relief that Swansea Town had not taken both points.
Brayley was a fine player, respected by fans of both clubs. I would go so far as to say that he was a candidate for being the best uncapped Welsh footballer since WW2.”
My condolences to Brayley’s family and friends.
RIP
