Nicholas Bignall
Footballer (born 1990)

Nicholas Colin Bignall (born 11 July 1990) is an English semi-professional footballer who plays as a forward. A product of the Reading academy, he played on loan for a number of Football League clubs before recurring injuries forced him to drop into non-League football.
Playing career
Reading
A forward or left winger, Bignall began his career in the academy at Reading and scored 20 goals for the U18 during the course of his two-year scholarship. Bignall signed a two-year professional contract ahead of the 2008–09 season, but spent much of the next three years away on loan from the Madejski Stadium. He made 53 appearances and scored five goals for League One clubs Northampton Town, Cheltenham Town, Stockport County, Southampton, Bournemouth, Brentford, Exeter City and Wycombe Wanderers.
After signing a new two-year contract in April 2009, Bignall made his debut for the Royals with a start in a League Cup first round match versus Burton Albion on 11 August 2009. He scored two goals in the 5–1 victory. He also started in the following round versus Barnsley, before leaving the club on loan and returning early through injury on 21 December 2009. He returned to fitness in January 2010 and made one further appearance during the 2009–10 season, as a substitute for Simon Church after 74 minutes of a 1–0 victory over Barnsley on 30 January.
Bignall made what would be his final Reading appearance early in the 2010–11 season, with a start in a 1–0 League Cup first round extra time victory over Torquay United on 11 August 2010.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Nicholas Bignall” as footballer (born 1990). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as footballer (born 1990). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q10452041. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1990, 2008, 2009 and 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nicholas Bignall” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.