Richards reacts to Headingley triumph
Leading 12-10 at half-time but adding a further 24 unanswered points after the interval, Richards said: “We won again and we got another bonus point, but we measure ourselves against own standard so we’re not entirely happy with it.
“Every game is a cup final for the other teams, and they were probably up for this one more so than any other game.
“It’s just one of those things, and we shot ourselves in the foot during the first half with the amount of turnovers we conceded.
“To make so many changes and still come away with the points is ultimately what we wanted, but we did make an uncharacteristic number of turnovers.
“That was probably us not giving the opposition enough respect, if we’re totally honest about it.”
Praising the home side, Richards added: “Credit to Carnegie because they turned up on the day, they put it about and I thought their seven was outstanding.
“They gave us a physical game, it was a good contest during the first half and we then ran away with it a bit after that.
“It’s all about your performance rather than the scoreline, and you can’t measure yourself against the other team.
“You’ve got to set your own standards, and just before half-time we were talking as a coaching group about what we were going to say to the players.
“We said to just keep it simple, which we hadn’t been doing, and once we tidied that up we were much more effective. We tightened it up, scored a few tries and got the points that we’d came down for.”
Having seen Josh Hodge scoring a try on his senior debut, Richards said: “We’ve got the ability this season to be able to blood some youngsters, with lads like Adam Radwan and Jamie Blamire playing far more this year than they had done the season before.
“Josh got a run-out today, he tried hard all game and scored a good try near the end, and he’ll have learned from the game as a whole.”
