Richmondshire RFC

Two years is a long time in rugby, especially if you don’t win a match. But a club like Richmondshire RFC, built by a bear of a man called Alf, are made of sterner stuff and somehow found a way to find positives in defeat and even notch the occasional win. 

It may have been constructed to keep people out (the Romans), to keep people in, or to mark the border between ancient kingdoms: nobody knows for sure, but Scot’s Dyke, the fourteen-kilometre-long trench that stretches across North Yorkshire from the River Swale to the Tees has been a topic of fascination since it was formed, a couple of thousand years ago. It houses several burial barrows and beneath one of them, legend has it, lies a crock of gold still waiting patiently to be unearthed.

Today, along that ancient passage sits Richmondshire RFC, a rugby club celebrating their fortieth anniversary this year and forever in search of their own ‘crock of gold’. The club, as the name suggests, are based in Richmond, North Yorkshire, which locals will happily tell you is the ‘original Richmond’.

Richmondshire ply their trade in Yorkshire Four North, the tenth tier of English rugby and the lowest rung of the RFU pyramid. And at present they occupy the very bottom of it. Their league position is hard to argue with, given only recently they’d marked two full years without winning a single game.

Rugby Journal has made the trip to the historic market town to watch them face Nestlé Rowntree RFC, named after the confectionary empire, who have travelled down from York. Rowntree’s, as they are known, arrive with a record of sixteen wins from sixteen this season and the rather unsettling distinction of not having conceded a single point since Christmas.

The night before the game we meet a gentleman known to us only as The Fridge, a former Richmondshire prop who set us up for the match in store. “It’s a shame you’ve come up to see this one,” he says with a shake of his big head, “they’re likely to get pumped.”

Being ‘pumped’ has been the harsh reality for Richmondshire in recent years as they have battled away at the bottom of the Yorkshire leagues. Yet this season has brought the faintest hint of a turnaround. In late January Richmondshire finally broke their long and painful winless run – stretching back to January 2024 – with an improbable 19–15 victory away at Aireborough.

For head coach Stephen Michael, known exclusively as ‘Smurf’, it was almost too much to take in. “One of the lads said to me with a few minutes to go, ‘I think we’re gonna win it Smurf’,” he begins. “I said, ‘listen, if we don’t win it, I’m not bothered’. The shift these lads put in, they had already won it for me. When the final whistle went, I had to have a moment, because I was choked up. 

“I was like, ‘oh no, I can’t go overboard here and have everyone see me crying’. So I gathered myself, but it was just brilliant to see them all elated. Then we beat Leeds Mods [Leeds Modernians] at home in the next game, which was a tight game that could have gone either way. But to be fair, I didn’t think we looked like losing it. So that was two in a row, London buses and all that.”

Along with The Fridge, Smurf’s nickname rather befits his physical stature, but there is a gruff air about him and a clear determination to start winning games regularly with Richmondshire. He is convinced the side has come a long way in his three years in charge, and earlier this season he began to notice the first green shoots of improvement. “I think it’s hard in this league. Since they’ve joined it, they’ve struggled,” says Smurf matter-of-factly. “We’ve had some cricket scores against us and it’s awful as a coach and as players to get those scores against you week in, week out. But the lads just seem to have stuck at it. 

“The turning point for me was when we went down to York RI earlier in the season. We turned up short-handed with thirteen players, and got 67 points put against us to nil in the first half an hour. Robbo [Richmondshire’s first-team captain Ryan Robinson] went to them and said, ‘we need to call this’. And they did, but they gave the game as a home walkover. So, on our home fixture, we had to go down there again.

“This time,” he continues, “we didn’t go short-numbered and we had a fairly decent squad with us. York RI were taking the mickey, they put 67-67 on the scoreboard [the actual score was 40-15].

“Anyway, the lads, they just played their hearts out. We didn’t win the game, but we dominated most scrums and scored a few tries. We came off that pitch that day as if we’d won it, and their lads came off as if they’d lost. 

“Honestly, I’m not kidding; since that day, I don’t know what it is, but I think this just seemed to put a little bit of belief in ourselves.”

Increased belief in the squad may well stem from a heavier training load, which Smurf believes has made his players fitter and stronger. When Richmondshire’s pitch becomes too muddy to use, “like training in chocolate custard,” he says grimly, the squad decamps to a nearby sports centre, where an ex-player-turned-PT-instructor puts them through their paces in the gym and on an artificial 3G five-a-side pitch. “Everybody’s bought into it,” Smurf says. “One of our older second row props, a lad called Mooch, has never been in the gym in his life, but even he’s started taking it on board.”

Despite the daunting task ahead of them in facing the side top of theleague, arejuvenated Mooch and the rest of Richmondshire look up for the challenge. Warm-ups commence in ill-matching shirts as lunges are undertaken with well-worn grimaces. “Oh my, Gareth’s joining the warm-up,” notes club captain Mark Parsons with surprise. Mark’s referring to Gareth Hastie, well into his fifties and still regularly turning out for Richmondshire having served three stints as first-team captain. He’s wearing a comfortable grey hoodie and spectacles, but looks serious as he glances over towards Rowntree’s warm-up. 

The occasion is set up beautifully, with Richmond bathed in glorious early-spring sunshine and the £300,000 clubhouse, opened in 2013 by then foreign secretary and former Richmond MP William Hague, humming with life. Working the bar is Jon Moulding, in many ways the archetypal club man, who moves swiftly to provide beverages and Scotch eggs alike. “I’m the development officer, but I also look after the clubhouse …” Jon begins before being interrupted by Mark: “And he runs the bar, and he organises all the food, and he helps run the walking rugby, and he has meetings with the RFU …” Mark corrects. 

Jon moved to the area in 1986, the founding year of Richmondshire RFC, and taught widely in schools across the North Yorkshire and Teesside region. In one of his first trips on a night out in the town, he was accosted by a group of lads in a pub who had just formed a rugby team. “The story of the club,” Jon begins with levity, “is that it was started by a guy called Alf Raine, who, in the north east, was a legendary rugby player, a real bear of a man, a huge guy with a huge beard.

“He did a number of jobs from bouncer, barman, enforcer, debt collector, you name it. His life story is like a Netflix show. He sadly passed away after moving to Goa in India after being a landlord of a dodgy pub in Epping Forest for eight years.”

You can’t get very far on a visit to Richmond without hearing about Alf Raine. As the evening descends and pints flow, wild stories circulate about the time Alf threw snowballs at a policeman when he wouldn’t let him drive home from the pub on a winter’s night, or when Alf roped his teammates into lifting machinery from a disused nightclub, only after they’d made some headway into the remaining barrels downstairs.  “He was a fantastic bloke … but,” Gareth interjects, adjusting his glasses, “how can I put this … you wouldn’t
trust him with money.”

Alf kept getting sent off for Acklam Rugby Club, “at least every other game,” Gareth confirms, and he needed somewhere else to play rugby. So, having bartended at Richmond Cricket Club down the road, Alf recruited several of the ‘barflies’ to put on their boots, bring their mates, and soon he had a team. 

“We started by playing rugby on the nearby Catterick Garrison [a major garrison and military town three miles south of Richmond], ‘borrowing’ their pitches,” Jon remembers with a laugh. “I’m still not sure whether they knew what we were up to. We got a bit of a reputation as being a fun club. Alf, as the main character of the club if you like, would start the singing, lead the drinking and all the rest of it. It was his personality really that set the club up.

“When we applied to the RFU to become a member, we applied to be known as Richmond, but there’s quite a notable club who operate under that name.

“We were then going to be called Original Richmond to spite them, or Richmond Castle. But in fact the small part of North Yorkshire we’re in was originally called Richmondshire, so that’s why we went with Richmondshire.”

From there, Richmondshire flitted between league and merit table rugby, oscillating between the desire to play social rugby or in an organised league. During the 2000s and 2010s, they dropped out of the leagues entirely, with the objective of building themselves back up. Whereas before, the club was reliant, over-reliant some might argue, on rugby talent stationed at nearby Catterick Garrison, Jon explains how that has changed over time.

“Probably the biggest thing that’s changed about the club is that while we still have Army guys who play for us, it’s fewer than it used to be, because times have changed. “Whereas back in the 80s and 90s, they were based on the camp, and they would stay there unless they got posted with wives and family, nowadays many of them come for the week and then go home at weekends to play their club rugby.

“We are pushing to try and get the league structure expanded so that second teams come into the leagues in Yorkshire,” Jon explains. “That would help us in a number of ways, in that we would probably go into a league like Yorkshire Five North, which looks like you’ve been relegated, but actually it means the teams we would play would be more of our standard. 

“There are a number of bigger clubs in Yorkshire One or Yorkshire Two, they might put their second team into our new league, and so we would get more competitive games. The last few years, we’ve had some heavy beatings, but only on one occasion in the last two years have we not fulfilled the fixture.”

For now, Richmondshire remain in Yorkshire Four North, and as they takethe field this afternoon the size difference between them and Rowntree’s is immediately striking. A club with 130 years of rugby heritage, Rowntree’s have dominated the league this season and have turned up with a squad of young, athletic players the likes of which are rarely seen at level ten rugby. 

It is Richmondshire who send the ball high into the cold air to begin proceedings, watched by a clutch of supporters on the touchline, many of whom were here in early February when the side secured their first home win in more than two years, against Leeds Modernians.

In the opening exchanges Richmondshire compete well enough physically, putting in a couple of solid early tackles and winning a few penalties. Soon after the start, a Rowntree’s player goes down and has to leave the field injured. Leading the applause is Robbo, the club’s first XV captain for the past three years.

Originally from Blackpool, Robbo has lived in North Yorkshire since he was seventeen, having joined the army a year earlier at sixteen. He now serves as a motor transport warrant officer, a senior non-commissioned role responsible for the control, management and coordination of military vehicles, from Land Rovers to fully armoured trucks.

Today he finds himself among the older heads in the side. Richmondshire’s team sheet includes several colts still young enough to feel slightly surprised at being there at all, and Robbo is keen to help guide them through afternoons like this. “I try to breed that confidence in the young lads joining the team,” explains Robbo. “I make sure to allow them to have their voice heard if they’ve got something to say. Just because they’re a young seventeen- or eighteen-year-old lad, they’ve got the same right to voice their opinion, like any senior player in that club.

“I first played for Richmond when I was about nineteen,” he continues. “During that time, I’ve dipped in and out, gone to play for a couple of more local teams, but I’ve always found myself back at Richmond.”

After a solid opening few minutes, a familiar story begins to unfold for Richmondshire. When Rowntree’s eventually bundle the ball over the line for the first try, the fatalism arrives almost immediately on the sidelines. Mooch, who today must wait patiently for his moment from the bench, offers a brief and unsparing assessment: “That was shit.”

From there the floodgates open. Two neatly executed moves from Rowntree’s bring a couple more tries, and the visiting supporters grow increasingly effusive in their praise for ‘Stubbsy’, Rowntree’s captain and tight-head prop. Once he gathers momentum, the younger Richmondshire players tasked with stopping him discover that this is easier imagined than achieved.

On the Richmondshire touchline, eyes begin to wander elsewhere as more tries go over. A kind of quiet acceptance settles in, broken only occasionally by the booming voice of Mark, who bellows reminders such as: “That’s what happens when you don’t tackle, ’Shire!”

For Robbo, the question of what exactly to say to a team that so often finds itself up against stronger opposition is one he feels keenly. “I couldn’t say this to the team,” Robbo says, pausing before continuing, “but I was struggling to see where we were going to pick a win up, because we’re going against teams that are very accustomed to playing at a higher level. They’re very fit and they’ve got a lot of league players too, and a league player at our level will rip through any union back line.”

But with the score at 38-0, Richmondshire manage a first for 2026. Rowntree’s knock on and, after a spell of neat passing, Richmondshire bundle the ball over the line – the first team to score against the league leaders since the turn of the year. It is not immediately clear who has claimed the try, though this hardly seems to matter.

Rowntree’s add another before half-time, but that barely registers either. What matters is that Richmondshire have kept going and given their supporters something to celebrate. Plastic cups are flung cheerfully into the air. Mooch breaks away from the back rub he has been receiving on the sidelines to high-five Smurf.

Despite the obvious difference in quality between the two sides, the game is played in the right spirit, which, in many ways, rather sums up Richmondshire.

The second half proves a tighter affair. Richmondshire manage another try to bring the score to 62-12. “We might have lost that by 100 a year ago,” Smurf notes afterwards.

“We’re becoming more competitive,” Robbo agrees between mouthfuls of post-match curry, “and I can see a future for the club in the younger lads coming through. I’m gonna have to pack it in soon, I’m 38. But I want to make sure there’s that plan in place for when some of us move on. At least a lot of them were involved in a win this season; they got that feeling, even though it was brief.”

As the post-match pints swiftly disappear and the aroma of Six Nations-themed Scotch eggs drifts through the clubhouse, memories of Richmondshire’s recent wins begin to resurface. The victories over Aireborough and Leeds Modernians are retold in loving detail, the final ten minutes of each recounted blow by blow as those gathered around listen with well-worn smiles, happy to hear the stories all over again.

Even when a club finds itself rooted to the bottom of the table, regularly on the wrong end of the scoreboard, moments like those matter. And who knows, Richmondshire might yet have a few more before the season is out.

Story by Scott Duke-Giles

Pictures by Samuel Simpson-Pattison

This extract was taken from issue 33 of Rugby.
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