'I sound very English': Richardson's 'terrifying' Scotland experience

When Fin Richardson says “a baptism by fire is almost always a good thing”, he is quick to add a caveat: “Maybe not necessarily at the time, or the week before, sitting there shaking away, thinking ‘is it really my turn already?’”

That was the situation facing the Glasgow prop the day before Scotland’s opening autumn Test against Fiji last year.

Their first-choice tighthead Zander Fagerson was due to start in the No.3 jersey, but his wife Yasmine was about to give birth to twins – the couple’s third and fourth children – and Fagerson had left the team’s base to be with her in hospital.

Richardson, who had joined the South American leg of Scotland’s summer tour a few months previously to train with the squad as a development player, had yet to make his debut for Glasgow at that point.
In fact, the sum total of his senior rugby experience was a single game for Exeter in the Premiership Rugby Cup and 20 matches – only nine of them starts – for Cornish Pirates in the second-tier English Championship. No wonder he was nervous.

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Glasgow

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“In the end Zander came back about four hours before kick-off but I was told if he didn’t come back, I would be playing,” Richardson recalls. “Talk about baptism of fire. I was up the entire night trembling away.

“The thing that was terrifying for me was I didn’t know any of the players that well, apart from the Glasgow guys. I hadn’t been part of the system before. I don’t know the way they play and I’m being given 12 hours to figure it out.

“Now I feel ready. I feel much more comfortable and it feels like I’m in a place where the pressure is on me to perform, not to learn. There will always be learnings, but the pressure is on the application of that learning, not the understanding.”

Colchester-born, Edinburgh-raised Richardson is an articulate, privately-educated law graduate who turns 27 next week, but is still making his way in the professional game.

In the end he did earn international recognition before playing for Glasgow – via a 23-minute replacement outing for Scotland ‘A’ against Chile. That came a week before his Warriors bow against Scarlets in the URC in late November.

Two years previously he was still playing student rugby, part of the same successful Exeter University XV as new Edinburgh centre Charlie McCaig, which lifted the BUCS title in 2022.

“I think the momentum has always been quite high for me because I didn’t start doing rugby professionally – even though I was in the senior academy at Chiefs – until I was almost 25 anyway,” he said. “I was just a student at university, doing law, playing rugby but only at collegiate level. So every step has felt like I am making a leap.

“But past a certain point, you start getting used to taking those leaps. Every year I’m coming in and everything’s faster and everyone’s more physical, and that transition is always very difficult. As long as I can keep adapting to that change, I think I’ll be OK.”

Richardson, who played club rugby for Currie and Edinburgh Academicals before heading south to Exeter, hails from a rugby-mad family. His uncle Jeremy, a lock, was capped by Scotland against South Africa in 1994. His father Gus, a former Army commander in The Royal Scots regiment, was Scotland’s first full-time team manager from 2004 to 2010.

He may be a late developer in professional terms, but Richardson is catching up fast as he prepares for his second season with Glasgow under Franco Smith.

“When I first started here, he didn’t necessarily know all that much about me. It became my mission to show him that I was willing to work as hard as I needed to, to prove to him that he could trust me. I definitely think I did that.”

Richardson made eight starts in the No.3 shirt last season, including successive away games against Leinster in Dublin, including a URC semi-final.

That culminated in a call-up to the Scotland senior squad for their summer tour to New Zealand and Fiji. Richardson started the first, non-cap, match against the NZ Maori, a 29-26 win, and was rewarded with a Test debut as a replacement in the final match of the tour, a 41-12 victory over Samoa in Auckland.

“I just had verbal diarrhoea the second I came off the pitch,” he recalled. “It was a massive moment for me. While I sound very English, I grew up in Edinburgh, my dad was involved in the national set-up, so from quite a young age I grew up really idolising the Scotland squad. They were super-human in my household. Me and my brother were just massive fans.

“So my debut was like a get-to-the-top-of-the-hill-and-see-how-far-you’ve-climbed moment. I finished the game and was looking around thinking ‘I can’t believe I have just played for the national team’. It always seemed just so unattainable as a goal. It was a very introspective moment for me, thinking ‘look at how much work I’ve done to get here, how many selections I’ve been through, how many times I’ve worked myself into the floor with blood, sweat and tears to get to this point’.

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Internationals

South Africa

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“I was very proud of myself, and very proud of everyone who has sacrificed so much time for me to get there. I spent the whole week before the game thinking about and that second the final whistle went, I was in floods of tears.”

Having achieved that goal, he is understandably keen to remain in Gregor Townsend’s thoughts for an autumn programme that will see Scotland face USA, New Zealand, Argentina and Tonga.

With Fagerson missing at least the start of the season and Richardson’s fellow former Chief Patrick Schickerling also currently sidelined, he can expect to shoulder plenty of the tighthead burden with Warriors early on, with the Sharks and Bulls both visiting Scotstoun in their first five URC games before the international break.

“For me, momentum has been very high and I need to keep that ball rolling now and keep the good performances coming, to show I deserve to keep going,” he said. “One of the positives for me is I will be playing a lot of rugby, whether I like it or not. But obviously I’m very hungry for it. I’m looking forward to getting in these performances. We’ve got a few big games at the start of the year and I’m raring to go, frankly.”

Should that lead to another Scotland call and a first run-out in blue at the national stadium, expect plenty more waterworks.

“Absolutely,” he grins. “I was crying after the game against Samoa. I’m going to be in floods if I’m hearing that second verse of Flower of Scotland in Murrayfield. I’d be very excited.”