His death was clearly horrendous, especially with him having a young family. Football doesn't come into that kind of thing.
However, he was vastly, vastly overrated by our fans, especially in retrospect. He was pretty good on loan but played mostly at RB, so you didn't get the full picture there. That was a hell of a lot of money at the time for someone who'd never played above the third tier and we didn't have much evidence of how good he'd turn out in his proper position. First half of 95/96 he was indeed excellent (in a terrible team), I don't envy him having to play alongside Eric Young. We'll ignore the Stoke game here. Absolutely imperious at Spurs in his final pre-crash game and I think MOTD bigged him up afterwards.
Definitely nothing like the same after for us. Was horrific in the first half of 96/97, so many errors leading directly to goals, often through being stupidly casual. If we'd had any other fit centre halves at the time then he'd probably have been dropped. Goal against Albion and then injured again shortly afterwards. Came back in December 97 and was little more than average after that until his contract ran out. Curle was the better performer by a significant distance. Doesn't cover himself in glory for Arsenal's goal in the semi final either though if Hans Segers could kick, it would never have happened.
A year previously, Steve Froggatt signed a new deal so we could get a fee for him (and a fair one as it turned out). Despite being injured for nearly half his time with us, Richards chose to walk out. It left a sour taste in the mouth. Now you can say it's his right to do that, who am I to begrudge someone in the free market. I think sometimes players owe a club to an extent though. Some players act honourably, others don't.
He was pretty good for Southampton, pretty rubbish for Spurs. Doubt he would ever have gone on to be as good as some of our fans seem to think, injuries or not. Telling that he never got an England cap. Sure, there was competition at centre half at the time but it wasn't that hard to get a game at some point. He never came close under either Keegan or Sven as I remember, wasn't even on the edge of thinking.
There was a definite novelty in seeing a centre half who could actually play football. I'm not sure he was all that though. When we do the Wolves best XIs, he never gets anywhere near my thinking, don't think I even had him in my top six in the first big one we did and this was before we signed Boly. Doesn't hold a candle to Lescott and I preferred Pollet and Curle to Richards.
