Unfortunately, after the club's first, and, in spite of the weather, very successful venture in staging the now annual firework display, the bar was shown to have incurred a net loss pf £474, even the fruit-machine being £124 down. The new extensions were completed for the season 1973, and the new dressing-rooms and storage were to be started at an approximate cost of £10,000

Then came the Sunday morning, when the old pavilion so proudly opened in 1904, and used as a tea-room from 1921, was sadly razed to the ground, leaving its newer extension replica to survive a few more months. The wreckers, members all, tackled the task with so much gusto and muscle, and so little sentiment, as to make nonsense of any suggestion that cricket is a game graced by gentlemen.

So, only twelve-months old when it housed Bradshaw's first championship side, the structure had seen the large crowds of before and after the first world-war come and go, and had proudly witnessed the deeds of professionals, Silcock, Threlfall, Rae, Hartley, Steele, Sigsworth and Greenwood; it had savoured the arts and crafts of Hughes, Walch and Gerrard and delighted in the stroke play of John Derbyshire, P. Roscoe, Donny Davies, W. Fletcher, the Mitchell brothers, D. Hobson, D. Hindle and B. Cole, and enjoyed the less subtle approaches of Joe Derbyshire, W. Baines, John Isherwood and B. Senior and oh so many others. The same 'old pavilion' that had watched over retired players and members reminiscing on its balcony through the mid-week summer days for 69 years past, now lay in ruins.

In 1974 the new building stood in its place. The Chairman, Mr. Arnold Hamer, commented at the A.G.M. that year, that his term of office had seen the club obtain a modern kitchen, up-to-date changing accommodation and a storage room, at the expenditure of £13,000, the President was still owed £4,000, having written off £1,000 as a gift, and the next priority was to clear this debt. Arnold's sights though were firmly set on improving the cinder track round the ground, obtaining a motor roller, and building a new scorebox.

This influx of new talent enabled the club to finish the season third in the league, thus qualifying for the Lancashire Knock-Out Trophy, the annual competition open to four clubs from each of any of the Lancashire leagues (the Bolton League's choice being the three clubs occupying the top league positions, together with the Hamer Cup winners).

This season of regrouping of forces suggested little of what was to come. The club was to go through 1976 losing only one match in the League and Hamer Cup competitions, yet only just pipping Tonge by two points for the Championship, Tonge winning five more matches than Bradshaw.

Statistics from that victorious year show that Mike Hardcastle's 692 runs were the most by a Bradshaw amateur, excluding the 1966 record of Brian Cole, who now surpassed this feat by totalling 934 including 10 fifties. Brian Senior equalled J. R. Gradwell's League record of 49 league and cup victims in a season, and, for the first time ever, two amateur bowlers, Stuart Adams and Bernard Clossick, took 50 wickets for the club in the same season, Ian Cowap and Denis Hobson also doing their fair share.

Two matches stood out. Firstly the Hamer Cup semi-final between the two top teams, when Stuart Adams had figures of 6 for 19 off 16 overs in a surprisingly low Tonge total of 71 at Castle Hill. Then, just when Keith Eccleshare, the Tonge professional, was threatening to run riot, having dismissed Cowap, Wallwork and Hobson in the space of nine balls, Brian Cole took the match by the scruff of the neck. As though unappreciative of the state of the game he scored 32 of the next 34 runs to come from the bat from the 37 deliveries he received, quickly dispelling any developing anxieties.