Andy Cook joined an illustrious club on Tuesday evening when scoring his first Bradford City hat-trick.

Cook’s treble – a perfect hat-trick of a header, left foot and right foot finish – made him the latest player to score three times in one match for Bradford City Football Club. This is a brief history of hat-tricks at the club since 1903.

The first-half hat-trick

The fact Cook’s goals all came in the first half of the 4-1 victory against Stevenage prompted the obvious question to start with: who was the last man to score three times before half-time?

The answer: the great Dean Windass – 7,789 days prior to Cook’s first-half hat-trick.

That is a lengthy wait between drinks!

How many players have scored City hat-tricks?

Andy Cook is now the 115th players have scored a hat-trick in competitive football for Bradford City, starting with John Forrest in the 1904-05 season, through to Cook.

Only 18 individuals have managed to score hat-tricks in more than one game for the club, though: 

5 hat-tricks: Frank O’Rourke, Jack Deakin, Eddie Carr.
4 hat-tricks: Jack Hallows, Dean Windass.
3 hat-tricks: Albert Whitehurst, Oscar Fox, Bruce Bannister, Jack Forrest, Gerry Ingram, Wallace Smith, George Handley, David Layne, John McCole, Derek Stokes, Robert Whittingham, Sean McCarthy.
2 hat-tricks: Nahki Wells, Bobby Campbell.

Four or more

Cook missed out on joining an even more illustrious club on Tuesday – which contains just 13 men.

Only 13 players have the distinction of scoring more than three times in a single competitive game for Bradford City. Ten of them feature on the list above, as well as three more individuals. They are:

7 goals in one game: Albert Whitehurst (a club record)

5 goals in one game: Jack Hallows

4 goals in one game: Eddie Carr, Jack Deakin, Frank O’Rourke, Albert Whitehurst, Oscar Fox, Bruce Bannister, Jack Forrest, Gerry Ingram, Wallace Smith, Willie Hibbert, Derek McNiven, John Hawley. 

Back-to-back hat-tricks

Only one man has scored hat-tricks in consecutive Bradford City matches. Albert Whitehurst scored seven times in an 8-0 win against Tranmere in March 1929, before following that up with four more goals three days later as City defeated Barrow on their way to the Division Three North title. Whitehurst finished that season with 24 goals in just 15 games.