A cult footballing hero for Mansfield Town in the noughties who deserved to have a song written about him. It really came about after he did an interview on Mansfield 103.2 saying he would be prefer people to call him Richard rather than Richie so I couldn't resist being a little cheeky.
He was a goal machine and I cooked up this idea that he would avoid scoring if fans and the local media kept calling him Richie.
The words were written after a 5 nil win against Boston and I found some latin sounding music that I liked in our production studio and put it together whilst I was doing a Breakfast Show on Mansfield 103.2 after I'd said off the cuff that Richie should have a song written about him.
I was covering for Andrew Delahunty that week and I wanted to try and do some cool bits because Andy always put so much fun stuff into his programme.
I turned it round whilst I was actually doing the show and I played it that day. People seemed to like it and I got invited along to next home game, I even got to sit in the directors box. I'm told a few fans went dressed as Mexicans to the game and the song was played at half time and people actually sung along to it. That was really cool and a really proud moment.
Mansfield won 1 nil and of course it was Super Richie who'd bagged it!
I found out later that Richie wasn't too pleased with the line , 'I may have had a hard paper round but it's always a thrill when the fans fill in the mill', but he was quite nice about it when we spoke a few weeks later.
Richie in his playing days was true journey man player and always made in impact in the teams he played for. He will always be remembered fondly by Stags fans and you never know he might even come back to Mansfield Town in the future as the manager!
