Dean Richards on rugby in France

WHAT he calls a "silly" mistake has seen former England stalwart Dean Richards dumped out of rugby for three years and smeared his record of 48 caps for England, three British Lions tours and leading Leicester to the European title.

With his socks round his ankles and his non gazelle-like physique, he was a giant of the game, even if a shambling giant, but risks being remembered for a faked blood injury and not as the powerhouse of a rampant England pack that ruled the Home Nations and as the first coach to win back-to-back Heineken Cups.

Now as he builds a new future with his sports equipment company – a move that has awakened his competitive spirit – he says that, if he could, he would move to France: "I love France; I’ve had fantastic times here. I’ve got a house over here.

"Given the opportunity to do what you want to do, I’d have to say I would probably move to France, because they have a much better lifestyle than the English. At the moment we have a house near Carcassonne which we bought because we wanted to ski.

"I look at the way rugby is just now, with so many English players in France, plus Scots, and I look back to when I was 18 and I played a year in Division Two in France with Roanne, near Lyon. It was an amateur sport and I was a policemen; to leave the police and to go abroad to try as a rugby player wasn’t easy".

Dean left the police to go professional in the early 1990s and it was his life until last year and the Harlequins-Leinster cup game that saw him banned from coaching and damned as the "central control" of the "bloodgate" affair.

In that game, one of his Harlequins players was substituted for an alleged blood injury. He was not injured, but was later cut by the club doctor. She was censured by the General Medical Council and the club physio lost his licence.

Dean says he wishes he hadn’t done it as "it was silly". It has left a stain, but he can look back on a career of success.

"I look at 48 England caps and there’s no one best moment. The 89 Lions was fantastic, the first Grand Slam in 1991, Leicester beating Stade Français at Stade de France for the 2001 Heineken Cup. They add up, but they pale into insignificance once you have a family."

"When I took over as coach at Leicester in 1998, it was very awkward because I went straight from being a player into the management side of things. All the players are your mates one day and the next you are almost determining their future.

"It was a different experience when I worked at Grenoble. From a work perspective, it wasn’t the best move but it was a fantastic learning curve. To understand the culture you have to be right in there amongst the politics and I was involved in it all: the association versus the club.

"The one thing I learnt is that, in French rugby clubs, the president has to have one or two or, in certain situations both, money or power, power and influence. Preferably both. For the family Grenoble was absolutely fantastic. I drove up into the mountains and I thought this is absolutely beautiful.

"It amazes me how well the French do in some respects, as they don’t train as hard as the English and they haven’t got the same self-focus.

"England can do well this year. It has taken time to get a team together. When Martin Johnson took over he had never managed a side, never coached and it has taken two and a half years to get into the groove. He is getting a team together which he understands is what is needed.

"As for France, I like the way Marc Lièvremont has had the courage to be able to swap and change and test and try. He is now probably 12 months ahead of Johnson. He knows the team he wants, because he had a lot more experience."