COVERED 2024 Winter

COVERED 40 TRENTBRIDGE.CO.UK Name: Tim Bradd Job: Ticket Office Manager Tenure: 5 years For many visitors toTrent Bridge, their first interaction with our historic home will be the friendly voice on the phone, or face at the desk, of our ticket office team. Tim Bradd has led our dedicated band of permanent and temporary staff since 2019, having been a firm fixture at Notts County, Nottingham Forest and the Nottingham Arena before making the move into the nation’s summer sport. We pull up a pew between boxes of brochures in the back office to discuss cricket, tickets, and having Notts County’s record goalscorer as a father. How did you get into working in sport, and ticketing? It was a bit of an accident really. My mum was a primary school teacher, and I had ambitions of doing something similar when I was younger. But when my Dad [Notts County forward Les Bradd] finished playing, he worked in the commercial setup at Notts County for a while, and he got me a Saturday job in the ticket office while I was at college. Not long after that, Notts got promoted and needed someone full-time. At that age, I’d just started going out with my mates, so rather than going off to educate myself I took the money! I was the assistant to the ticket manager, but then when Notts got relegated a couple of years later he got made redundant, and I got left to my own devices really, and learned how to run things from an early age. From there, I went to the Arena, then Forest, then back to Notts, before I moved here around the time Notts were relegated from the Football League. How has working in cricket compared to your time in football? The biggest thing I noticed was that members of a cricket club are valued more than season ticket holders are in football. Overall, it’s been really nice working here – I wish I’d moved into cricket sooner, in many ways. What was it like working for the football club that you supported? You do end up seeing the players in a different light to when you were a fan in the stands, but I ended up with some good friends from the playing squad. I still speak to Shaun Derry, and I was quite pally with Sam Allardyce when he was manager too.The players, coaches and office staff were a tight-knit group back then. Were you into your cricket too? I used to come toTrent Bridge regularly on a Sunday for the 40-over games – Franklyn Stephenson is the name that sticks out as someone I really enjoyed watching. Me and a group of friends used to sit in STORY BY Matthew Freeman BEHIND THE SIGHT SCREEN