On the opening weekend of the 1996-97 season, two newly-appointed managers, each of considerable international renown, were in opposition at The Dell.

Graeme Souness’s Southampton was entertaining Ruud Gullit’s Chelsea, each with new signings on show. Gullit paraded Gianluca Vialli from Italy and Franck Lebeouf from France, while Souness presented Richard Dryden, a Gloucestershire lad who had been recommended to Bristol Rovers by the club’s lottery ticket-seller in the Stroud area and who had then spent 10 years mainly moving between south-west clubs in the lower divisions.

Many must have seen this as an anomalous signing for Souness, none more so than Mark Lawrenson, who declared that he’d appear naked on TV if Dryden were still in the first team at the end of the season.

The cause of this anomaly was one of the assistants Souness had brought in: Terry Cooper had managed Dryden both at Exeter and Birmingham, at each of which he had played almost entirely on the left, wearing either No.3 or No.11. Of his many managers, Dryden considers Cooper “without doubt, the single biggest influence on my career.”

Richard certainly did his mentor proud against Chelsea, when he had Vialli in his pocket. Souness soon brought in Claus Lundekvam to partner him and Richard marked the occasion with what would be his only League goal for the Saints. He was saving himself, it would appear, for that season’s League Cup-run in which he joint top-scored with Matt Le Tissier, Egil Ostenstad and Gordon Watson. Souness mainly kept faith with the Dryden-Lundekvam pairing, and Dryden indeed appeared in the last game – his 29th, personally – of the season,

prompting Lawrenson to insist that his prediction – as opposed to himself – was a joke.

But Souness’s successor, Dave Jones, generally preferred Ken Monkou to Richard, who eventually went on loan to Stoke. Glenn Hoddle promptly packed him off for a second spell at Stoke, in time for him to pick up a winners’ medal at Wembley in the Auto Windscreens Shield Final. Hoddle continued to lend him out, when he was not on crutches, and would never play him. Richard then wound down his League career at Luton, before going non-league, notably at Tamworth, under Cooper’s son, Mark. He had by now settled in Nottingham, working in the transport business as a partner in BWD Logistics, but he was enticed back into the game as a coach and more recently been enticed further afield to taste life and football in Kolkata in India.