We caught up with former City media officer Richard, who now lives in Woodville, New Zealand, to speak about supporting the Grecians.
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[Music] well I am in the little village of Woodville which is in North Island of New Zealand awesome so I think you will possibly be the furthest away person that we spoke to um so tell me a bit a little bit about your background with exas City and how long you followed the club my first um I can remember playing football ever since literally time existing and I loved playing it in a playground and my first professional football memory was actually the um FA Cup Final I want to say like 96 where it was I think Manchester United versus Liverpool and Eric canar scored that fantastic volley from outside the box and um and like any silly child that became my team I supported Manchester United for a few years much to my uh sins um and then um out of um I’m not entirely sure the reason why but my Dad decided to take me to my first professional game and it was in Devon but it wasn’t actually for exitor it was Plymouth AR girl versus Derby County in the FA Cup um with the magic of hindsight it’s good to say that Derby won the game so Plymouth lost so that’s a good first memory and then um perhaps a month later so this is like 1999 um my dad really wanted to see Peter Bley play because he was one of his idols growing and he was playing in for Harley PA United at the time and ex were playing harle po United um so we went down to watch the game and I was in the old cowed and um yeah I never looked back I absolutely loved it so um yeah it’s just interesting that obviously went to a plumouth game a couple of weeks earlier and uh I still went for the red team so it could have been a very different um world certainly made the right choice I think um and when did you move over to New Zealand uh 2014 yeah so I think so about 15 years then from your first game to to when you moved over and and in those 15 years you must have had some some pretty good memories what stands out to you most in those times Well you say good memories like a lot of them at the beginning were pretty bad because I happened to join at the time where um the club was in t the turmoil and um we were going through all the problem with ITV Sports and um yeah the club was really struggling and as you know obviously we went down to um the conference and so on but for me the conference was actually a really good time period because I’d only ever really known the club as a team that’s always fighting relegation in division four or currently League two um so it was just really good to um actually see us winning on a regular basis rather than sort of like yay we got a draw um but yeah it it was really nice to um see exitor getting the wins obviously after um a few years in the the conference we got promoted um I was quite I was I became a season ticket during those years um because it was the first time I actually had my own money prior to that was um basically relying on my dad to take me to the matches and um yeah so that’s what I spent my exposable income on was basically watching exra games and I got a season ticket for a couple of seasons and I loved it so much but in the 20178 season I um decided that I would watch every single extra game of the entire year so I went home and away I went for 56 matches in total and that was fortunate for me that that was the year that we got promoted and won the final in Wembley so couldn’t have really picked it much better and yeah I was going to ask if if you at that game actually and then the following season was was Ro were you at the RO game as well no um so that was a season I start I um joined University so I was um away at high Wickam um so I was able to watch like probably the I don’t know I’ve just told a slight light I went on a gap here during that year um and so up until Christmas I watched all the extra games I could and then the r game you’re referring to was when I was doing my Gap year and then the season after that is when I went to highwick and obviously you’ve actually went on to do some work for the club in in a similar position to myself now talk to me a bit about that yep um so basically what happened was that while I was at um High Wickam I went to study film and television production um and I was able to get a job with Wick and wanders and um basically just doing camera work for them and my University got a partnership deal um to work Reading Football Club as well so um I was properly working for Wickham and doing the placement with reading and um part of my course I was required to get work experience and I already I wasn’t allowed to use white Wickham or read so I thought well I love EXA I’ll be there over the summer so I’ll go back and I volunteered my time um Pete Evans was the uh press officer at the time and um he gave me the opportunity which I’m very grateful for because um I think in his own words he gets lots and lots of applications of people trying to get work experience but I think it’s because I was already working for Wickam but he was more lenient towards me and uh um so I was basically volunteering when I had time off when I wasn’t at Wickam or reading and then when I finished University in 2012 I um so pet Evans who uh left um to positions and there as a vacancy for the media manager so um I was tempted to apply for the actual media manager role however while I’m very skilled at the video side of things I not um so good with um like I don’t have the magazine skills and the writing skills at least certainly not up to the level that’s required to be the media manager so I actually wrote a letter to Julian tag and I basically said hey I see you got this vacancy coming up um I don’t think I could be the media manager but I’ve definitely got a skill set that you’re not utilizing at the club at the moment um could I come and join you um join the team and he was very open he called me for a little interview and uh we sat down and we talked things through and he really liked the idea and um from that point it was Richard Dorman the media manager and then there was me um basically his budding psychic giving him lots of video um content and yeah the rest was history to the point where you’re now essentially doing the same job but I created about 10 years ago so yeah full cycle moment yeah it’s uh how how would you say compared to your time that that not just specifically ex to city but the whole media World in football has progressed yeah it’s um it’s definitely dramatically changed for the better because if you think about um how like practically everyone has social media or some form on the phones and like it’s so accessible so like at least when I was doing it yes obviously YouTube and Facebook and these things were around but they weren’t the monsters that they are today um so it’s just kind of amazing how interactive you can be with a club anywhere in the world as obviously I’m proving being in New Zealand and supporting exitor you know I can still keep up with the team um yeah it’s quite it’s one of the better things of Technology advancing y just on that about being in New Zealand obviously there is a big time difference how do you you keep up with the games is there a lot of early morning wakeups to watch on on I follow do you follow on social media you know how do you take things in ex to City based yeah well um night is day and day is night I’m afraid so it makes it incredibly hard for me to actually watch anything live um and it’s just so for example like I’ve got this really good um app which basically gives me live updates so practically any match in the world and obviously exra are my number one team on that list um but because again the time difference when I wake up I I normally get a notification telling me what the full-time score was rather than you know blowby blow updates um so I try to make an effort when there’s like a really big game you know like the Wembley games and so on but even that’s quite um a struggle because these games are happening at like two in the morning and like sleep is quite a good thing to get um but um yeah it’s it’s kind of well what it’s going to sound a bit weird but one of the ways I actually kind of keep up with the team is uh through the like the football games you know like FIFA and now EA Sports FC like because that’s basically how I keep up with the players because it’s very hard for me to watch the games live but at least I can actually have a allbe it fictionalized version of the club and yeah I kind of make assumptions based on how good the stats they are given in the game so that might be a terrible way of doing things but it seems to work for me have you come across any other extra City fans in New Zealand um no it’s um sadly not particularly much of a football country um normally when the football comes up they ask you who do you support and of course because you when you don’t say a Premier League team they all just get instantly confused yeah um so I think the rare occasion where someone has known exitor is is actually through the football games like again FIFA and EA Sports Etc because they just generally want to play over a lower league team and work their way up to ranks and by luck they’ve just chosen exter as one of the teams um so whether these people genuinely know exitor is obviously a very different thing but yeah there’s uh yeah there’s not particularly um a big exitor fan base but by all means if someone’s watching this video and they’re in New Zealand and they ex the fans come and say hi just small country so I’m sure we’ll bump into each other at some point I think we’ve connected a couple of Australian supporters through this so maybe we can do the same with the with the kyes uh yes this season last season we’re in that weird period where I’m not sure which I refer to the season just gone um your take on it you know what your thoughts on on on Gary the team you know particular players and some of the results you may may have seen yeah it’s um been I would say an incredibly successful season because I look at League one as the Premier League so like for us just being in it is the victory like I know obviously people have their Ambitions of going up to the championship in the actual premier league but like I I’ve been there through the bad times like I know just having a club that’s financially stable is the priority and I do have genuine worries that if we ever did go higher um yeah we might overspend and end up in a bit of a bad situation so yeah if we if we just keep consistently playing well in League one I am over the moon even if we stay up on the very last day on gold difference you know I’ll take it um yeah for me it’s the Premier League and I know it doesn’t sound particularly exciting because some people would say oh we’re playing bolt and wonders and Charon athletic but I see those as former Premier League teams so if I was there I would be attending those matches like I was when I I was actually living next in terms of favorite players whether that’s now or whether that’s from from Times Gone by who are some of the players you sort of idolized when you started watching the club yeah um well there’s been many great players gone through the club um my favorite player was uh Steve Tully um and a funny story with um Steve was because he was a man the manager of the women’s team when I was working there and um I um started covering the women’s team because they were getting zero media coverage and I was like well that’s not right um so I started filming their games and such and like over time I generally got to know the some of the players and the back room staff the ladies team and um Steve Tully because he was my favorite player it was actually someone I kind of purposely avoided like not in a rude way it was just like I just didn’t you know the whole don’t meet you hero stuff um so then one day eventually he sent me a Facebook invitation to be friends and I was like oh this is a very surreal situation of course I accepted but it was a bit like H there you go yeah Steve T wants to be my friend so yeah and you referenced to the coverage of the women’s team that you look as you know how much that has grown and obiously just got promoted in the season just gone well so even there there’s been massive progress I’d say oh totally um I’ve been watching your coverage um of the women’s celebrations and such and like I couldn’t believe the crowd they had like when I was filming it would basically be like with the greater respect it would be like maybe the families and the boyfriends of the players like it wasn’t a crowd per se and just to see like hundreds of people I mean I don’t know what the official attendance was maybe it was over a thousand but it was just such a like I couldn’t believe that many people were watching exas City women play and obviously they got promotion and um yeah it was really good and I’m I mean I obviously I can’t take any credit for what the players are doing on the pitch but like I just remember they had um the reason why I got involved with the ladies team was because um they had an FA Cup run I think they um beat like B rookie 70 in the FA Cup then they went on to the next round um and there was a bit of Co coverage because it was like the best they’d ever done in the FA Cup and um so I went along to the match and just it was good fun you know like I love football and regard regardless of gender and yeah just there was no coverage so then I just made it my mission to turn up most weeks where I could and um support the team and yeah it was just I think the players were a bit shocked when they kept seeing their games getting broadcast onto the local Grecian player at the time but yeah it’s a it was just nice to put a spotlight on them and it’s good to see that they’re doing so well in the present day and obviously I wish them all the best and hopefully they’ll keep rising up the and so how often are you able to to get back to exitor because I guess it’s not as simple as sort of an Impulse just pop back for the weekend kind of Journey it’s something you’ve got to you know take quite a lot of time out of your life to do and and travel for what you know over over over a day really isn’t it yeah it is it’s a bit much 26 hour flight to get from New Zealand to uh England um I’ve been back twice um the first time was um really good timing because it was um the game where we played um Liverpool in the FA Cup um so what happened is we had the home leg the two two draw I was actually following that game on my phone as I was like traveling because the time zones for that one actually worked out much better um so then but albeit we didn’t win which we were winning um ended up being a draw so we had to replay at anfield pretty much a couple of days after um I got back into the country um and yeah my dad just uh he bought tickets while I was on the flight over and we went to watch the um the game uh obviously it wasn’t the result we wanted but it doesn’t matter it’s a good day out good Payday for the club um and when I went back in 2019 it was the summer so there was no matches which is a shame but um yeah yeah in terms of um New Zealand though it’s um yeah it’s a bit of a long way to go you can’t really just casually hop on and hop on a plane and just return to St James’s Park but if it was an option I probably would and other than really Wellington Phoenix there’s not really a football culture out there do you get to watch much live football at all like in in any way um yeah so this is a conversation I’ve had with quite a few of my um friends here in New Zealand who are kiwis um so I always say New Zealand’s not a very good football country and they and when I explain everything about living in England and how like almost religious it is um they just can’t relate to it and because this is a more of a rugby country and with no disrespect I kind of find that it’s just not the same like yes they like rugby but it’s not like every street corner you’re going to see a different football shirt and like there’s a match every weekend and stadiums sell out no matter you know what division you’re in um and so I do try to go to as many games as I can unfortunately I work on weekends which is a bit of a problem um but I I try to go down to Wellington Phoenix as often as I can uh currently as I speak New Zealand’s only professional Club um they introduced a women’s team two seasons three seasons ago um which was fantastic because then that basically double the pool of matches I get to watch um but as I said I work most weekends so it’s quite hard to go watch them but in um some good news for the country is that they’re adding a second team ockland FC which is going to be starting next season so in theory there’s more T more matches I can potentially watch um and that’s the men’s team next season and then they’re going to introduce the women’s team the season after so I have four teams to support it’s a bit smaller than 92 plus the army of non- League clubs but you know it can’t be greedy when you’ve haven’t got much to work with you said you had uh some some interesting and funny stories to share I believe as well from your time working at the club yeah um so a lot of them is kind of almost impostor syndrome because I’d always been a fan for so many years it kind of felt a bit surreal often to sort of be actually part of the team and um with the club um so for example the the uniform I wearing right now um was given to me by L pring um who was the Kit girl at the time and um I say girl she was a woman um and um she we had a we had a conversation at the cat FID once where um I think for some reason I completely misheard what her age was like I thought she said she was like 58 or 68 or something when like she was 30 something and um but um she never corrected me on it and so I was like you look so young um and what was funny about it was um a few days later I bumped into Rob Edwards you know the same Rob Edwards who um scored the famous goal of Wembley and everyone consided the cult hero he came up to me and he’s like uh so uh Rich uh how old’s Lou and I was like uh basically um she’d obviously been telling him the story and um yeah so yeah she wasn’t 50 something or 60 something as I thought was told um yeah she was 30 something but then every single time Rob Edward ever saw me he kept asking me the same question and he just keeps laughing every single time and again it’s one of those weird things where like when most people think of him you think wemble hero you know the guy who took us back to the football league and when I think of him I just think of him making fun of me because I miss heard AG footballers do that as well don’t they they pick up on things and especially in our positions they uh they will keep a joke going for as long as they can yeah for sure yeah um there was a time when um again I was on um I think it was dagging him away and um there wasn’t enough there wasn’t we weren’t sending a vehicle for like um the photographer and the media team so um I traveled on the um the club bus the team bus and that was really surreal for me because I’d only been doing the job for like I know two months or something so I’m fairly new and um and I was sat next to um Paul Tisdale Julian tag um and uh I can’t remember his name but the goalkeeper coach of a time and it was just again really weird because like these are people who I look up to and I’m just just part of a team just sat there and um of course when I got off the bus a dagam you know we had these little kids trying to make me sign autographs and stuff like no no no I’m just a normal person no I don’t need to do that um I mean part of me wish I kind of did sign the autographs then I realized I’d probably break their hearts once they realize I’m nobody I actually had had similar um was actually shefood Wednesday I just just happened to be helping the kit guy unload some of the kit and I said I’m just I’m just the media guy like you don’t need my autograph mate um so it sounds like it’s still the same you know now as it was was then for you I guess I guess so I mean obviously I’ve not been there for a while but um yeah time is a flat circle I always say um you could write a book about doing our job sometimes and some of the stories that we had and and some of the stupid things that happen in the in the media circles when working at a club I think it’d be uh think it’d be a fairly good book yeah oh for sure yeah you could probably collate everyone who’s done our jobs and just the media jobs in general and put it into a big Bible and I think so I think so probably all of it but um it’ll be entertaining yeah um another one um um so we you know the player EG egg for Davids um the legendary player who played for a and the Netherlands and so on so he was playing for Barnett in um a league two game and it was really surreal because like um a thing that you guys do which I started doing was um walking onto the pitch and kind of filming the players as they’re walking around and such and because there was such a media spin over egford Davids playing at St James’s Park like d was was basically just constantly focusing on him and um I don’t know if um you’ve got access to these sort of things but I think Chas the photographer at the time he had like a photo and it was like me and egg davs kind of stood like next to each other and it was just one of those really surreal things because like um again most people think of him as a Champions League winner and he finished like third in the Euro several times and so on but like I grew up and he was like on the of the FIFA 2003 football game you know that’s that’s kind of my introduction to him um and yeah I was just there on the pitch just hanging out it’s just it’s kind of weird the people you bump into just doing our job but um obviously it’s so much fun and yeah you definitely get Memories We will uh you know we will try and dig that photo out for you and we’ll include it in the video I think um that sounds like a great way to end actually um which thanks so much for your time um and for taking time out of your day um for speaking to us and uh yeah we hope you can make it back over to EXA sometime soon yep no I would love to and thank you for having me
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