Just as Lawrie McMenemy’s parting gift to Chris Nicholl had been his final, exceptional signing of Jimmy Case, Nicholl

handed on to Ian Branfoot his latest signing: Richard Hall, a teenage centre-back plundered from Scunthorpe for a bargain £200,000. Richard soon established himself in a side perennially battling for Premiership survival. His five seasons at The Dell ended when Dave Merrington was fired. Somebody at Southampton had taken their eye off the ball and allowed Richard’s contract to lapse. Arch-poacher Harry Redknapp swooped to take him to West Ham, for a fee fixed by a tribunal at £1.4 million.

Richard was still only 24 and there were those, Matt Le Tissier included, who envisaged his adding full England honours to his 11 Under-21 caps.

But in a pre-season game v Carshalton, Richard sustained a foot injury. He managed a handful of games towards the end of 1996-97, but that was that: he was forced eventually to quit, in April 1999, at the horribly premature age of 27. West Ham kept him on as their scout in East Anglia. For a while, Richard combined that role with coaching the kids at Portman Road, where he himself had started out as a schoolboy. Eventually, the Ipswich job became full-time and he moved up the age groups, coaching the likes of Connor Wickham and Jordan Rhodes. Following a change of regime, Richard joined the coaching staff at Colchester. The U’s opened a new training ground in 2012, with Richard as the senior professional development-coach, there, helping youngsters bridge the gap between youth and first team. Le Tissier paired Richard with Neil Ruddock when selecting his “Best Saints XI”’ in 2002. By the time Matt’s autobiography was published in 2009, the exceptional partnership of Claus Lundekvam and Michael Svensson had taken over at centre-back, but Matt’s 2002 assessment of Richard’s attributes should  nevertheless be noted here: not only was he

“terrific in the air,” but he was “brave, strong and read the game well.” 

While he wasn’t the quickest, his acute positional sense meant that he was “rarely done for pace,” while Matt also appreciated his headed goals from set-pieces. But all over at 27. In 2019 he was still at Colchester coaching the U23s.