HOW CAN THE FA SAY A SEASON NEVER HAPPENED?
Former England Test keeper Jack Richards is now chairman of Truro, whose promotion dream was ended by the pandemic. He asks...
The chairman of Truro City is not easily fazed. he has won the Ashes Down Under and faced the West Indies pacemen on the fast track at Perth.
he crossed the North Sea to forge a career in shipping and has turned his hand to coaching rugby union.
Yet former england wicketkeeper Jack Richards was utterly stumped by the decision to expunge the Southern League season.
Not least because of the hurdles cleared since last summer, in the aftermath of relegation and a year spent lodging at Torquay, when manager Paul Wilkinson quit Truro to join Bury only two weeks after signing his contract.
There was no mower to cut the pitch, no hot water in the home dressing room, no water at all in the away dressing room and hardly any players. ‘We got through that,’ says Richards. ‘Firefighting at its best.’
Truro were top of the BetVictor Southern League Premier South with games in hand and looking good for promotion when the coronavirus crisis brought the season to a shuddering halt, before the FA declared it null and void.
‘I’ve been in sport and I’ve won and lost,’ says Richards. ‘I’ve had the ups and very much the downs. I’ve done the same in business. emotionally, I can write this off as another down. But I feel for the staff, supporters and players.
‘Some of our players have never won anything and they’ve been fighting hard. In Cornwall, it’s not easy. There’s a lot of travel. We’re desperate for success and a good level of sport. This was an opportunity to be part of a winning team again.
‘It’s disappointing, to put it mildly. We were taken aback by their decisiveness. These are difficult times and we knew there were meetings, but for them to say the season is being truncated, or expunged. That’s an interesting word. I know other chairmen who are totally bemused and somewhat frustrated.’
Richards has a son-in-law playing fifth- tier football in Belgium, where they used a formula to work out where teams would finish based on games played and average points.
‘I can’t imagine it’s too difficult in this age of algorithms,’ he says. ‘The problem I have is just to eradicate the year. We’ve had some great games and paid out a fair amount of money. Spectators and sponsors have paid out… just for the FA to say it never happened.
‘Let there be winners and losers. That’s what sport is. But to say it never existed, I find that difficult.’
Truro are among more than 100 clubs in steps three to seven of the non-league who have signed a letter to the FA expressing ‘profound concern and displeasure’ at the decision to expunge all results for the 2019-20 season. Richards was born in Penzance and left Cornwall at 17 to start his career as a professional cricketer at Surrey. he made his england Test debut in Brisbane on the 1986-87 Ashes tour and scored 133 on his second appearance in Perth. ‘Winning the Ashes came to feel more important over time because we didn’t win it again until 2005,’ he says. ‘We also beat the West Indies on numerous occasions that year which we hadn’t done for ages — they were so dominant.’ Richards scored a vital 50 in Perth as england beat a West Indies team including Michael holding, Malcolm Marshall, Joel Garner and Courtney Walsh on their way to winning a four-team one-day tournament. ‘As a pro you want to do well against the best,’ he says. ‘Australia were good, but the West Indies with their four quicks were unique. I look back to that win as equal to the hundred in Perth or the five catches Safe hands: Richards in his cricket heyday REX at Melbourne. Unforgettable moments and all a long time ago.’
Richards retired from pro sport at 30 and moved to Belgium, where he forged a career in a shipping business based over the border in the Netherlands.
he did, though, stay connected to cricket and went on to coach the Belgium national team.
‘Derek Underwood was president of Antwerp Cricket Club and he roped me in,’ he says.
‘Someone challenged me to do something with Belgium. We did quite well, beating teams like Denmark, and I took them all the way to Samoa for World Cricket League matches.’
Many years after appearing at scrum-half for Cornwall Under 15s, Richards also found himself lured back into rugby union.
‘My son picked up rugby and I got involved, did some coaching,’ he recalls. ‘Starting from scratch we ended up with my son and three others from the same club playing for Belgium Under 18s.
‘In my day, so much of it was selftaught. We had good players in Cornwall, but we didn’t have a prevalence of coaches. It wasn’t like going through the Surrey Young Cricketers. I found my way by asking questions and listening to the answers. I went five days a week to the nets at Penzance as a kid and I’d be mostly catching a ball, because they had a load of good batters and they didn’t give me the chance to bat.
‘That repetitiveness combined with some natural technique and the stubbornness to keep doing it were the key elements.’
When he signed for Surrey they had one coach, Arthur McIntyre. ‘Luckily enough, a former wicketkeeper,’ says Richards. ‘We went to Australia for the Ashes with a support staff of four — Micky Stewart as the manager, Peter Lush the team manager, the physio and a scorer. Now, my word, it’s everything but the kitchen sink and they’d take their own kitchen sink if they needed to.’
his work leaves little time for cricket although he was lured into playing when he moved back to Cornwall. ‘That broke my body,’ he says. ‘I was 60 and trying to play with youngsters, keeping wicket with a frozen shoulder.
‘I could only use one hand. They thought I was taking the mickey catching the ball with my right hand going down the leg side.
‘My lower back gave me huge problems after I finished cricket, and my right shoulder from diving and landing on the hard ground.’
In 2018 Richards returned to his roots, answering a call from Dicky evans — millionaire businessman and owner of the Cornish Pirates — to work with the rugby club on a project designed to offer a focus for sport in the county. Last year, evans bought Truro City, too.
‘Who knows what the future holds,’ says Richards. ‘Two months ago I would have said there’s no reason why we can’t aim for Cornish Pirates in the Premiership and Truro City in a higher level of football. Now it’s difficult to know where we will be.’