Graham and James have competition for No.2 slot

By Frank Stormont
July 20 2006

At 23 Richard Oxley already has 17 years of playing experience.

 

Richard Oxley

 

Richard Oxley or ‘OXO’ to his team-mates, whose signing to Plymouth Albion as hooker was announced last week, chose to come to Albion for a number of reasons. After playing against Plymouth for a couple of seasons and respects the set up and the way they play and can see the level of support for players.

Richard is a big soccer fan and has a season ticket for Newcastle United but does not expect he will have much opportunity to use it much this season.  He also does not expect to play any 5 a side football games, something that he has enjoyed in the past.  He also enjoys playing tennis and golf with a high teens handicap.

His first game of rugby came at a very early age following both his grandfather and farther who also played for the local rugby club.  Richard joined Durham minis when he was just 5/6 years old.

Richard knows that he will need to work hard to achieve the first team place.  Last season he part funded his rugby by coaching in schools and university and by selling a few houses as an estate agent. He has also worked on a building site. 

Richard, who comes from Sedgley Park, says that there was no real rejoicing when they stayed up at the end of last season. They thought that there would be no relegation at the beginning of the year but were playing to stay out of the bottom two places in the league, something that looked very possible until they were beaten 55 – 7 when Sedgley Park travelled to Brickfields in April. As it happened the RFU announced a few games before the end of the season that there would be no relegation to allow for Nation League One to increase from 14 to 16 teams. 

His most memorable time was when Sedgley won National League Two and were promoted into National League One, Park beat Rugby Lions 50 points to 35 in the last match of the season to secure the title and promotion. He sees his ultimate rugby ambition is to pull on the white shirt and play for his country, something he has already achieved at under 19 level.

At five foot eleven inches and 15 stone he is of similar build to Director of Rugby Graham Dawe but at 23 Richard has age in his side.  Richard has been credited with the same number of tries as Graham. There is expected to be strong competition for the first team starting position between fitness coach James Owen, Richard and Graham.

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