Chat with Peter Richards ahead of Sale game

Peter Richards
By Duncan Wood
October 31 2002

He's had a frustrating few weeks watching from the bench with Agustin Pichot in such good form. Peter Richards will now get his chance with Gus on international duty. He answered a few of my questions this week.

Has it been frustrating waiting to get a run in the first team?

Yes it has. Simple answer!

And now you're obviously looking forward to getting into the action?

Yeah. Hopefully I've now got 4 games in which to give a good account of myself.

How much chance have you had to practice with Shane?

Well, we've played in preseason games and we've had a couple of second team games together. And when we've been training over the weeks, we've stepped in to do team runs together so we're used to working together.

You had a calf injury a couple of weeks back. Is that all cleared up?

It was a hamstring that was reported as a calf injury! It's an ongoing thing with me but at the moment it's ok.

You'll be up against Bryan Redpath, how do you rate him?

I haven't played against him before. But he's a very good player like a silent assassin in that he doesn't seem to be doing a lot to the naked eye. But he's got very good unit skills - his kicking and passing are very good and he links the forwards and the backs very well. They play a very fluid game and he adds his ability to that very well.

What other Sale players have you identified as potential dangermen?

Well, Hodgson's not playing so they've actually got their second choice scrum half at fly half. So that's an area of strength to them where they won't be as strong as usual so I think that they'll be looking to their back 3 to be putting a lot of points on the board to be kicking the penalties.

So, they'll be looking to score a lot of tries through their back 3 which is obviously strong with Robinson there and Cueto and Hanley on the wings are both very fast and very attacking. They play a fluid, wide game so they'll be looking to get those guys involved as much as possible.

It's been a while since your last English league game, what are you looking forward to most?

Just getting back amongst it to be honest. When I was playing in Italy last year, we played against Wasps in the European Cup and it was nice playing at Loftus Road and playing a style of rugby that I wanted to be part of.

It's been a couple of months and now, on Friday, I'll get the opportunity just to be back in amongst it and pitting my ability against other people to see where I'm at rather than in training.

I've been in the wilderness really for about 18 months, in Italy the standard was a lot weaker. I just really want to see where I'm at now as far as my ability goes.

What do you think that you'll be bringing to the team? Will the game plan differ at all?

We'll have to wait and see! I think I have different abilities to Gus. He's got his running game. I have my own running game but I think it's probably a bit more physical. I like to take it into contact and I like to think of myself as a strong defender.

I don't think we differ that much. We both like to play a bit ourselves. Whether I do it more or less, we'll have to wait and see on Friday and see how much breath I've got!

Finally, are you feeling confident about the game?

As a team, yeah. We're certainly fresh as we didn't play at the weekend and training this week has been good and we're looking forward to going up and giving it a crack really.

We've identified the next 5 games as being really important as they're all quite close to us in the league. Quins was meant to have been last week but Sale is a stepping stone. We've put a focal point on November as being a good month. We're looking for 4 wins and hopefully we'll start on Friday and hit the ground running.