It may be stretching it a tad to say that Marc Richards has been preparing for the job of manager of Gloucester City all of his adult life, but he’s certainly eminently qualified for a role that he took on in the final days of 2017.

You see the 36-year-old, as well as being a decent footballer who played for a number of clubs in and around Gloucestershire, has spent much of the 21st century coaching footballers at all levels of the game.

And it is that playing and coaching background that will surely stand him in good stead over the next weeks, months and hopefully years at the National League South club.

As a player he numbers Tewkesbury Town, Cheltenham Town, Gloucester City, Cinderford Town, Weston-super-Mare, Swindon Supermarine, Cirencester Town, Chippenham Town, Shortwood United and Evesham United among his former clubs in the area.

And as a coach, he has worked alongside Tim Harris at Gloucester for the past three-and-a-half seasons, and also has experience as a player/coach during a three-year spell with Manly United in Australia.

Add in his work as the current assistant director of elite sport at Hartpury College and two summers coaching in the USA in New England and California, in between studying at university, and it’s not surprising that the top brass at Gloucester saw him as the heir apparent once Harris had decided to call time on his near four years in charge.

And he’s got some impressive qualifications too, holding an MSc in coaching science as well as his UEFA A licence coaching badges

It’s fair to say that in footballing terms, Gloucester City have always been closest to the Richards heart and his young son Jack has already been a mascot for them.

A central midfielder or a centre-half, he enjoyed three spells with the club as a player, and when he returned to this country in June 2013 after his time out in Sydney, his first call was to the then manager Dave Mehew to see if there was a role for him at the club.

There wasn’t at that time and he had to wait until the start of the 2014/15 season before getting the call from Harris to work as his number two, with the plan being that he’d be the number one at the club one day.

“Yes, I always thought that it would probably happen,” said Richards, “but it has happened slightly sooner than I anticipated.

“The plan was for Tim to maybe move up to a director of football role at some stage with me taking over as manager.”

Those plans were thrown out of the window, of course, when Harris decided it was time to move on.

But despite his love for all things Gloucester City, Richards didn’t jump at the job when it was offered to him, preferring to take time away before arriving at the decision that now was indeed the right time.

He was helped along the way by Harris, the man he says he has learned most from during his football career.

Harris, who is now in charge at Redditch United, told The Local Answer at the turn of the year that his former right-hand man was the best man for the job, and he’s delighted that he’s got the job.

And that respect is clearly mutual.

“Tim’s been great for me, I can’t thank him enough for how much support he’s given me since he’s left,” said Richards.

“I’ve learned so much from him over the past few years, he’s a real top man.”

And while many football folk all over the county will echo those words about Harris, there’s no doubting that Richards is the top man now – at least at Gloucester.

So where did Richards’ footballing journey start?

Born in Taunton, he moved to Tewkesbury at a young age and learned his football in his adopted town, firstly at Tewkesbury School and then at Tewkesbury Town.

The late 90s and early noughties was a great period for football fans in Gloucestershire – a time when Cheltenham Town won promotion to the Football League – and Richards was good enough to get a slice of the action at a time when Steve Cotterill was performing miracles at the club.

He was with Cheltenham for four years from the age of 15, playing for the youth team and reserves at the same time as the likes of Shane Duff and Lee Burby, and he also played a couple of first-team games in the “mickey mouse cup competitions”, before getting the ‘you’re being released’ call that all youngsters in football dread.

That was at the start of this century but far from that being the end for Richards, it was really just the beginning because that was when he got into coaching, discovered that he liked it and, probably most importantly, found that he was good at it.

“One of my first jobs was as a community coach,” he recalled. “Then when I was 22 I got a job at Hartpury as a lecturer. I was coaching the students and doing my badges at the same time, so everything was geared up to becoming a football manager.”

Not that Richards, who is working without a contract at Gloucester, has any designs on going into football management full-time.

“It’s so precarious, it’s so volatile as a manager or a coach,” he said. “I think I’ve got the perfect balance at the moment.

“My job at Hartpury is mutually beneficial both for the football club and the college. The club train at Hartpury – it’s a fantastic set-up – and a lot of the students play at Gloucester.”

And while Hartpury College and Gloucester City have loomed large in the life of Richards for a decade and more, it hasn’t prevented him from travelling further afield.

And he didn’t just go over the Severn Bridge or up the M5 to Birmingham to improve his footballing education, he went to the other side of the world.

“Ex-Gloucester City player Matt Smith who is now playing in Thailand was out in Australia, and he told me I should go out and give playing one last go,” remembers Richards.

“I had a trial at Newcastle Jets and ended up as player/coach of Manly United where I was also captain.”

Manly, where Richards also lived, were a semi-professional club, and it will come as no surprise to anyone who has enjoyed the Australian way of life that Richards absolutely loved it Down Under.

“We had a great time,” he said. “I got a job as an education consultant in Sydney which meant I had to catch the ferry across Sydney Harbour every day.

“I used to catch the slow ferry across in the morning and then I’d catch the ferry which had a bar on the way home in the evening!”

He worked hard as well, of course, and it’s that willingness to work hard, apart from his undoubted acumen, that will surely help him to be a success at Gloucester even though the ongoing ground issues – the club are playing their home games at Evesham United this season – won’t go away.

Despite those obvious problems, Richards certainly likes what he sees when he looks at his squad.

“It’s a good squad that Tim and I put together,” he said. “It’s a young squad and there are a lot of exciting players. There’s a good nucleus and they’ve got plenty of ability.

“We’ve got good training facilities and it’s a professional set-up at Evesham.

“Yes, we are punching above our weight but that’s a good test of me as a coach and a manager.”

And coaching and management is what Richards intends focusing on.

“Tim’s advice was to stay away from all the other stuff and just focus on the football,” he said. “Of course I’d love to be back playing in Gloucester but that’s something I’ve got no control over.

“The one thing I would say is that Gloucester is a big city not to have a Football League club.

“If everyone gets behind the club, who’s to say that Gloucester City can’t take off?

“Let’s see how far we can go. It’s so important for the club to get back to the city in terms of the atmosphere and togetherness. And Meadow Park is a great location right by the Quays.”

It certainly is, and if there’s one person ideally qualified to carry on the good work of Tim Harris, it has to be Marc Richards.