Western Australia have been well served by some fine full backs over the years, but it’s safe to say that there were none tougher than Ray Richards.“Protect yourself, never look back, and go hard at the ball,” was the advice from his mother, and he certainly adhered to it. His physical approach has been felt not only by opponents but team mates. Asked who his toughest opponent was, South Fremantle back pocket player Don Dixon had no hesitation. “Ray Richards.” Which we considered a strange choice, considering the star full back was a South player. “Ray was the hardest bloke to play against, even though he was on my side,” he laughed. “He would run through a pack, leaving all in his way in a mess, regardless of what jumper they happened to be wearing. One day I was in the back pocket at the hospital end, where the boundary slopes, and the line is about two feet off the asphalt of the bicycle track. “Lizard” took the mark, went off balance, and I grabbed him before he ended up on the asphalt. He stuck the elbows out and I copped the full brunt of the backswing. “Sorry, Don,” he said. I said: “next time you can have the concrete.” Ray Richards learnt his trade at an early age playing against older and bigger men at Deanmill, near Manjimup, at the age of fifteen. In one of his first games with the seniors he came up against a tough ex soldier from Pemberton. “The bloke made a full scale charge at me and I pulled out,” he recalled. “I was quickly grabbed hold of by a team mate, who told me he’d break six of my ribs if I did that again.”“If I played a good game I’d get a post game sip out of the older players’ beer bottle.”Richards was fairest and best for both Deanmill and the Warren Association as a seventeen year old, playing as a forward. He and some of the other young blokes of the small mill town, including a youngster just starting school, John Todd,  would spend many evenings kicking a ball around. On one occasion Ross Hutchinson dropped in and asked him to go to South Fremantle. Using the old two week permit form, Richards went to Fremantle Oval, where a job was quickly organised.The South Fremantle side of 1950 was in the early stages of what was later to be called the club’s Golden Years, and with Laurie Green, Len Crabbe, and Bernie Naylor to compete with, there wasn’t much hope for a forward, so his first year at Fremantle Oval was spent in the reserves, interspersed with some appearances on the bench of the league team.   When full back Bob Mason retired at the end of that season, Richards put his hand up for the vacancy. He was given first option at it, and became South’s regular custodian for the next eight years, playing a hundred and forty eight games in the process, and many years later was to be selected at full back in the club’s 1946-76 best team.The fastest runner at Deanmill school, Ray could also jump, and this showed in his football, his pace for a full back unsettling many forwards as he tore through a pack, usually in a straight line, caring nought for whatever or whoever may be in his path, friend or foe. But it was his marking ability that separated him from the ordinary as a full back.  In his second season he played in the first leg of the club’s hat trick of premierships, missed the 1953 success with a broken ankle( “I could have played,”) and was at full back once again in 1954. Selected in the Western Australian side in June, 1955, he was one of his team’s best players in a loss to Victoria in Melbourne. Ray went on to play thirteen State games, several as vice captain, and was often named in the best players, showing his versatility in a match against Victoria in 1957, when he was thrown into the ruck and kicked two goals in an impressive display.Richards style of play often attracted the attention of the men in white. “In a game against West Perth I got some teeth knocked out by one of the opposition right in front of the ump, and he reckoned he didn’t see it,” Ray said. “I copped plenty out there, and gave a bit back, so I got caught a few times.”Towards the end of the 1958 season, Richards received an offer to move to the struggling Claremont as captain coach. “It was a bit of a bolt from the blue,” he said. “I reckoned I might battle for a clearance, so the brains trust from Tigerland said: “Toddy is going for the coaching job at South next year and will get it, so stand against him, miss out, then say you want to coach, how can they knock you back?” The advice was right, Todd got the job, and Richards went to Claremont. He went to a club in the doldrums and therefore different to the one he had left, just out of a successful era. “It was a divided organization, some with you and some against, and it wasn’t an ideal background for success,” Ray recalled. After two years at the helm, Richards made way for Victorian Peter Pianto and remained as a player for the 1961 season . Richards went to Geraldton the following year as coach of Towns before retiring from football. Ray’s working life in his playing days was as a mechanical fitter. “The ships would have to be fixed so they could go out,” he said. “I would usually be working until ten on Saturday morning, have a shower, and race to the game. It was the same for blokes like Toddy or Barry White, who were butchers. These bloody pansy wharfies, Marshy, Treasure and co, they’d get looked after on the wharves with a sleep and free paper and coffee when they woke.”Asked about the top full forwards of the day, Ray laughed. “Cuppla backhanders and they’d be lambs. Don Dixon and I would tell our respective opponents: “watch yourself with me mate over there, he’s had a rough night and looking for an excuse to biff some poor bugger. So they’d both be looking over their shoulders.”Richards was full of praise for team mates Cliff Hillier and White. “Whitey was number one in my book. Always there when you wanted him.”  Chatting with Ray Richards was one of those enlightening experiences. He is from a different time with different values and his  honesty and straight forwardness  is refreshing  The years away from the Mill have certainly not taken the country from the boy.Ray Richards was one of the best full backs this State has seen, proving himself as a boy against men at Deanmill, a member of one of the best club sides of all time, and reigning as Western Australia’s custodian for eight years.