Q: What can we do about the scourge of the fans – continually collapsing scrums and too much kicking?

Dean Richards: Well with collapsing scrums it’s never our fault it’s always the opposition! The law changes in recent years have made scrums a lot safer, more competitive and technical. If the referee isn’t up to the mark then you’ll get lots of resets.

In my day there was much more skulduggery – Gareth Chilcot was a horrible, horrible man, you would always get fingers in your eyes, knees coming through etc.

The feed to the scrum is never straight but the referees turn a blind eye to it, I think if you look for straight lineout throws you should look for straight feeds too. But Danny Care has been penalised four times for it this season – I think it’s victimisation!

I just hope it never becomes uncontested like Rugby League.

Regarding kicking, if the opposition isn’t considered a good counter attacking team then you can pressurise the opposition with a good kick and defensive line. It does become boring at times with continual ping pong kicking. But with Ugo, Williams, Strettle, Brown and sometimes Evans in the back three I think we have a more counter attacking back three than most.

Q: Why did you take Nick Evans off at Ulster?

Dean Richards: It was all down to the fourth official who doesn’t have the power to force a substitution.

Nick said he was too cold to be able to kick the previous penalty on the left side of the pitch, then we had a penalty on the right that Nick thought he could kick. We told the fourth official that we wanted to send Chris Malone on after the penalty had been taken, but the fourth official told the referee to force the substitution through.

I don’t think people who weren’t there can realise what the conditions were really like – Will Skinner was still shivering in one of those foil survival blankets thirty minutes after the game had finished.

Mark Evans: I was amazed the game went ahead, it shows what it was like when they had to evacuate a stand for safety reasons – what about the safety of the players on the pitch? The whole day was completely bonkers, I don’t think the game would have gone ahead if it wasn’t a Heineken Cup game and being televised.

Q: You’ve just announced the Chris Malone is leaving, have you signed anyone to replace him?

Dean Richards: Everyone knows that my preference is to sign young English qualified players. Even if we have signed somebody already we wouldn’t tell you because of the impact we feel it has on us and the other club involved.

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