Dean Richards

Dean Richards
Personal information
Date of birth	11 July 1963 (1963-07-11) (age 46)
Place of birth	Nuneaton, England
Height	1.91 m (6 ft 3 in)
Weight	121 kg (19 st 1 lb)
Nickname	Deano
Rugby union career
Playing career
Position	Number eight
Clubs		Caps	(points)
	Leicester Tigers	314
National team(s)
1986–1996 1989, 1993	England British Lions	48 6	(24)
Coaching career
1998-2004 2004-2005 2005–2009	Leicester Tigers FC Grenoble Harlequins

Dean Richards (born 11 July 1963) is an English former rugby union player and current coach. He had a long playing career with Leicester Tigers and played 48 times for England. In August 2009 he was suspended from coaching for 3 years for his role in fabricating a player's injury in what was known as the Bloodgate scandal.^[1]

Playing career

He was schooled at John Cleveland College, in Hinckley and played for Roanne in France for a year before returning to England to play for Leicester Tigers.

He was one of the top number eights in the world, winning 48 England caps and six caps for the British Lions on their 1989 and 1993 tours. He captained Leicester for four seasons in the early 1990s. During his playing career he won the league twice and the cup three times, and was voted Whitbread's Rugby World player of the year in 1990/91. He played in the 1987, 1991 and 1995 World Cups. He led Leicester to their first Heineken Cup final against Brive, at Cardiff Arms Park, which they lost.

In 1988, after playing football with the Calcutta Cup along Princes Street in Edinburgh with Scotland's John Jeffrey^[2] Richards received a one match ban from the Rugby Football Union. Jeffrey received a stiffer six month ban from the Scottish Rugby Union.

He was dropped by Leicester coach Bob Dwyer in favour of Irish back row forward Eric Miller.

Richards was a police constable for Leicestershire Constabulary between the 1980s and 1990s before English rugby union became professional.^[3]

Coaching career

Richards took over from Dwyer and in his first full season as Director of Rugby won the Allied Dunbar Premiership, the third time in club history. The Tigers successfully defended the title for four years in a row under him. Leicester also won two Heineken Cups, defeating Stade Francais 34-30 in 2001 and beating Munster 15-9 in 2002.

After two trophy-less seasons and a failure to get out of the pool in Europe, Richards was sacked in 2004. This ended a 20-year association with the club. His former back-row team-mate and assistant coach John Wells was chosen as his successor. Richards was deeply unhappy about this and asked the club for all his memorabilia back and for the club to rename the bar which was named after him.^{[citation needed]} He was later appointed coach at French club FC Grenoble.^[4] This started well, but whilst fighting relegation he suffered a players' revolt on the way to play Toulouse, as a result of claimed mismanagement by the Grenoble owner.^{[citation needed]}

He was appointed Director of Rugby for Harlequins Rugby Football Club in 2005 following their relegation from the Zurich Premiership in the 2004-05 season, and led them back to the Premiership at the first attempt, in a season where they lost only one league game. The Harlequins player Tom Williams has spoken of "a climate of fear and moral paralysis" at the club under Richards.^[5]

Suspension from coaching

Richards resigned from his post at Harlequins over an incident in which it was acknowledged that he had orchestrated and had "central control"^[6] over a fake blood injury to Tom Williams during a Heineken Cup fixture against Leinster.^[7] He was given a three year suspension from coaching as punishment.^[8] The International Rugby Board (IRB) also confirmed that they would apply the ban to rugby union worldwide.^[9]

References

External links

• Harlequins profile
• sporting-heroes.net - Dean Richards
• Lions Profile