Richmond Football Club is a rugby union club from Richmond, London. The coach, Brett Taylor, laid out plans for the club to be in National League 2 South in two seasons, and attempts were made to structure the colts teams into an effective feeder system for the 1st XV.
Richmond always traditionally played without a number 13 (similar to Bath) – the outside centre would wear 14, right wing 15 and fullback 16. Back in the amateur leagues, Richmond returned to their traditional numbering system before promotion to the National Leagues in 2008 saw them forced to adopt the uniform 1–15 numbering system according to RFU laws. One of these players was USA international Jon Hartman. They entered the National Colts Cup and having defeated eight opponents most notably Blackheath, they beat former champions Old Northamptonians, 25–12 at Richmond play at the Athletic Ground, Richmond, which borders Royal Mid Surrey Golf Club, and is close to other sporting facilities such as Richmond Swimming Pool, Later on in the professional era, Richmond 1st team moved to the Richmond contested the first ever rugby match with At youth level, Richmond's strongest rivalry tends to be with nearby This article is about the English rugby union club. However, during the professional era they adopted squad numbering; meaning rather than rugby's usual method of giving numbers 1–15 to the starting line-up, players were assigned a number for the season, as seen in football. For the 2007–08 season, the club recruited a number of semi-professional players to boost Richmond's promotion chances. Within two years (summer 2011) promotion was achieved and Richmond played in Richmond's youth section is also highly successful - In the 2009–10 season a colts team was revived based on the highly rated U17 age group team of the previous season, and several U19 players returning to further bolster the squad. In 2009–10 Richmond appointed Oxford University Director of Rugby Steve Hill to take over after fourteen years in charge of the university side. In 1996, the then third division club was bought by financial markets trader and In the 2007–08 season, Richmond laid out a serious plan for promotion - something they had failed to achieve in the past two seasons, one reason being they had not had any semi-professional players on their books. Richmond appointed Geoff Richards to take his place.
It is a founding member of the Rugby Football Union, and is one of the oldest football clubs. Richmond eventually achieved promotion, winning all but one of their League games.
For the Following two years in National League Two, Geoff Richards decided not to renew his contract citing differences in opinion between the board and himself on how the club should move forward.
However, during summer 2008, London Scottish were boosted financially and subsequently signed Taylor as their head coach.
It fields teams in both men's and women's rugby; the men's first team currently play in the RFU Championship following their promotion from National League 1 at the end of the 2019-20 season, while the women's first team play in the Women's Championship.