Barnaby David Westlake Richards (Cheltondale, 1952)

The following is an abridged version of the tribute paid by Barney’s nephew, John Inverdale, at a memorial service held at 3pm on Saturday 29 June.

Three o’clock on a Saturday. Barney would have approved. The last time I saw him, we were together in his sitting room watching the Italy–England match at the start of this year’s Six Nations. 2.15 kick off... We spent a lot of time discussing kick off times. Saracens had recently played at 5.30 on a Sunday… Barney was a forward thinker in so many ways but there was something special to him about 3 o’clock on a Saturday.

So here we are, early stages of the first half – time to run through the early stages of a life, very well lived, that began in Bath on 2 June 1934 and went via school in Cheltenham, to two years’ national service in the Royal Navy, to more than half a century devoted to his family and almost as devoted to Saracens Rugby Club.

When he came out of the Navy, having served on board HMS Implacable and HMS Cumberland, Barney began his professional career as a journalist on the Swindon Evening Advertiser. Having moved into advertising, working for Bass/Worthington (the brewers in Burton on Trent), he realised London was where it was at and joined Erwin Wasey to work on their garden products and coffee publicity campaigns.

Barney had a huge variety of advertising clients during the next 30 years, including Airfix Toys, KLM airlines, GD Ethical pharmaceuticals (ahead of its time in 1966), Greenall Whitley, Oxfam, Thai Airways, Eurotunnel (at the very outset), Air France, British Rail, RAC and many more. Barney knew his advertising onions, that’s for sure.

While working at an agency called John Haddon and Co, Barney found himself working with someone called Pauline. Love blossomed over the photocopier machine and the rest is… She was the sometimes strident organiser, he was the calm unruffled voice of reason. ‘Are you sure?’ ... a kind of Sgt Wilson to her Captain Mainwaring.

They got married at 3 o’clock on a Saturday – when else – in 1964. Charlotte was born in 1966; David 3 years later; they moved to Stone Hall Road [in north London] in 1972. For half a century that was the Richards’ manor. Barney was always a fierce defender and robust advocate of life north of the river. There really was ‘no place like home’ even though he and Pauline were intrepid travellers of the world, especially after he retired.

Part of his North London pride was being a member of Enfield Cricket Club, but mostly it was because his life became synonymous with Saracens Rugby Club. This was a Saracens far-removed from the Nigel Wray-ing/Owen Farrell-ing/Europe conquering/swaggering Sarries that we know today. This was a Saracens that Harlequins wouldn’t give a game to because they considered the facilities at Bramley Road to be inadequate. But a Saracens that – then as now – had a remarkable sense of community. For three decades, Barney was at its heart, mostly as Secretary, until the sport went professional.

Brian Davies, the Sarries captain as the game turned from amateur to professional, has written: ‘Barney epitomised the best of values – companionship, humbleness and belonging. I’d go so far to say that he was as instrumental as anyone in both maintaining the club’s history but also in driving it to become the force in the game that it now is … I loved speaking with him post-match – always calm and objective.’

That calmness, mentioned by many, obviously stood Barney in great stead over the past few years. Barney remembered, only too well, bombs dropping on Bath in the 1940s, and his generation just got on with things. Through Pauline’s illness, and then losing both his daughter and Pauline in such a short space of time, his stoicism was something to behold. In every phone call, he’d acknowledge the sadness and loss, but would always try to accentuate the positive.

And on that note, I think we should all acknowledge the part that David [Barney’s son] has played in recent times. Not only did he make Barney the most technically competent octogenarian on earth, he was Barney’s ‘rock’ for the past three years.

There was always a constancy to Barney. A reliability. A sense that, despite all the slings and arrows, everything would be alright. For nearly 90 years for Barney, every day was 3 o’clock on a Saturday.