RIP Dean Richards

Dean Richards was not a player I'd heard of when he arrived on loan from Bradford City in 1995. As a nine-year old boy, I assumed that if a club was willing to let a player go out on loan to another club, he obviously wasn't good enough for Bradford to want him. Why on earth are Wolves signing him then? Evidently, as most nine-year old boys are, I was wrong.

What a majestic player he was. I didn't go to Wolves very often as a child (my father is an Everton supporter), so my viewings were mainly limited to those few times we were shown live on ITV. In one of these games, I remember him performing a perfect Cruyff turn to bamboozle the opposing forward. The commentators marvelled at it. I was unimpressed - I'd perfected that move in my back garden months earlier; if I could do it, surely a professional footballer should be able to. However, as I watched more and more of Wolves through the 90s and more football in general, I came to appreciate what a good footballer Dean Richards was. Not just a good defender, but a good footballer.

For me though, the nadir of Richards' career came not in the real world, but in a virtual world. Championship Manager (and later Football Manager) dominated much of my life as a child (and in my teens, and now as a young adult - you can work out how old I am if you really want to), and on CM3 he was defensive perfection. Along with a 17 year old Robbie Keane, he was a player I used to sign no matter who I was managing. My second ever promotion came on this game - Richards captaining my youthful Wolves side to a playoff victory (if you're interested, former Crewe striker John Grant came off the bench to score a hat trick ensuring a 4-2 win in extra time). Richards was the most important part of that team, a legend in pixels.

Unfortunately, in the real world, promotion never arrived. The nearest were two agonising playoff semi-final defeats to Bolton Wanderers and Crystal Palace. A car crash in 1996 ensured his Wolves career never reached the heights they could have – 122 appearances in four and a half seasons is nothing to be sniffed at, but there was always the feeling that it could have been so much more. Instead, he left for Dave Jones’ Southampton and quickly imposed himself as one of the better defenders in the Premier League. Among calls for an England cap, he was linked to all the biggest clubs in the country, but it was Tottenham Hotspur, managed by his former manager Glenn Hoddle who forked out £8.1 million for him. His time at Spurs didn’t work out as planned – Hoddle didn’t last as manager and he never quite gained the full confidence of David Pleat. His time at Spurs was cut tragically short as he was forced to retire from the game due to dizzy spells and headaches at the age of just 30.

For me personally, this has come as a real shock, and made me examine my own mortality. Richards is the first player who I can genuinely remember that has passed away. I feel old when I see the likes Gary Neville, who I remember as a youngster, retiring but to see someone like Richards passing away has knocked me for six. Richards was just starting a new profession as youth coach at Bradford City and I very much hope that the tribute at Molineux next week lives up his memory. The chanting of his name today was wonderful, and he was a player who all Wolves fans should remember fondly.