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Richard Tombs

Australian rugby union player

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionDec 30, 2024
Entity authorityQ3431274
Source-derived summary

Richard Tombs (born 5 January 1968) is an Australian former professional rugby union player who played as a centre.

Tombs was born in Te Kūiti, New Zealand and educated at The Armidale School, New South Wales, Australia. He toured Britain with the Australian schools side in 1985–1986 before establishing himself within the New South Wales Waratahs team and winning his international caps. He won five international caps with Australia.

In 1997 he became one of the first three overseas professional players to join Gloucester Rugby in England, alongside Terry Fanolua and Philippe Saint-André. He remained at the club for three years, gaining a reputation for consistency; his centre partnership, with Fanolua, is still regarded as one of the club's best ever.

His wife is former Australian international netballer Carissa Tombs (née Dalwood), with whom he has three daughters. One of his daughters, Latika, has been a training partner with Giants Netball.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Richard Tombs” is australian rugby union player. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Richard, Tombs and Australian, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1968, 1985, 1986, 1997—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1968-01-04. For this dossier, Richard, Tombs and Australian is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “australian rugby union player” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 30, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q3431274. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1968, 1985, 1986 and 1997.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Richard Tombs”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Richard Tombs primary sources, Richard Tombs archive and Richard research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Richard Tombs”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Richard Tombs” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.