We had the fortune of being able to bring down Dean Richards to Sri Lanka during the 2nd leg of the Bradby this year. “Deano” as he is fondly known to his friends is quite an unassuming bloke, having played for England and the British Lions in the 90’s, whilst being the most capped #8 for England. He continued his rugby professionally having coached the Leister Tigers to the Championship and most recently being involved with the Harlequins Rugby Club as their Director of Rugby.

His understanding of the game and the current context was refreshing to listen to and the knowledge imparted on some of us of how to manage a modern day rugby set up was invaluable.

Some of his hilarious anecdotes were most entertaining and definitely deserves a sharing among our rugby community.

The England Team was playing the French and “Nasty Nigel Horton” who was feared throughout Europe was getting up to his tricks as usual. The French “enforcer” decided to take matters to his own hands and on a line out, decked Nigel Horton for him to fall flat on his back, writhing in pain. The referee, who was an Irishman, told Nigel that he saw the whole incident and that he will take care of the player. Immediately, came Nigel’s reply, even while writhing in pain, “ref, what ever you do, don’t send him off the field. I need to take care of him myself”.

In his first international for England, Dean was quite surprised at the training schedule. He got to the Hotel on a Wednesday and fully expected a 2-3 good sessions with the “new” team. However, he was quite surprised to find out that they didn’t go thru the line out drills etc, but played football as a method of fitness. His room mate was Maurice Colclough, who proceeded to go out on Wednesday and Thursday night, get well and truly sloshed, crash out in the room at 3am each night. Not a very good start for a professional career. Infact, the day of the match, in the dressing room, one hour before going on to the field, Maurice Colclough lit up a cigarette, which would have shocked the current professional athlete family – but, then again, the era they played, they were amateur’s rugby players.

Yet another story was the British Lion tour of Australia. The Lions, who went into the game all confident, got thrashed more than 35 points in the 1st test. The Lions then decided to take the take the game into the next stratosphere in terms of the physicality and decided to name the 2nd test, the “Stitch Count”. This meant, how many Aussie blokes would be in stitches. Needless to say, with a French Referee who will turn his back on most infringements, the Lions managed to maul the lads Down Under and had a stitch count in their favor of 76-3. The third row for the Lions was Mike Teague (England), Finlay Clader (Captain & Scottish) and Dean Richards. The Lions won the three test matches, 2-1 after their physical domination in the 2nd and 3rd tests.

On a final story, this is about Dean’s other life, his Police work. They had managed to track down a known pedophile and on a given day, raided the guys place and busted him. Each Sergeant was given a room to search, and Dean was assigned the Living room. After a little while, there was a raucous laughter and it got louder every time one his colleagues went up stairs to the bedroom. Out of curiosity, Dean too went up only to find that the pedophile had a life style size posted of Dean on his ceiling that he had kept looking at whilst being on the bed.

In of his speeches Dean mentioned that he was pleasantly surprised at the standard of our Schools rugby, having witnessed and gave commentaries at the 2nd leg of the Bradby as well as help out with a coaching stint at CR & FC. He was more surprised at the level of support from the spectators with the Bradby crowd drawing more than 7000 people. The icing on the cake was the fact that when he was informed that the Sri Lanka as a country has the 13 largest playing contingency as a country and has been playing rugby over 135 years. Dean, maybe the next England Coach and the results of the Rugby World Cup in September this year in France will determine this factor.

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