Rugby’s voice falls silent

The Springboks played a key part in Bill McLaren, who died on Tuesday at the age of 86, becoming known as the “voice of rugby.”

The venerated Scottish broadcaster was working as a school teacher in his life-long home-town of Hawick (pronounced Hoik) but had dabbled in commentary after having come into contact with describing sports events while convalescing from a bout of tuberculosis that nearly claimed his life by describing table tennis matches for the hospital radio.

He was offered an audition “calling” a rugby match involving the 1951/52 Springbok touring side for BBC radio and made enough of an impression to be offered a position as a commentator in 1953, when Scotland were beaten 12-0 by Wales, before switching to television six years later.

He would stay behind the mike for fully 50 years during which time his name would become synonymous with the game of rugby as Henry Longhurst and Peter Alliss were to golf, Murray Walker was to motor racing, Harry Carpenter to boxing and Richie Benaud and John Arlott to cricket.

If a voice could have been created to fit with rugby it was McLaren’s Scottish brogue. He was impartial to a fault and his sayings (a list of which appear below) would become part of the lore of the game.

I first met him while covering the tour of Chick Henderson’s Barbarians to the UK in 1979 when he strolled over to introduce himself and enquire after the correct pronunciation of some of the South African names while the team were practising for their match against the Scottish Borders in Galashiels, just up the road from his beloved Hawick.

He was already a revered figure in rugby but you would never have said so as he, typically, reached into his pocket, produced a tin can, and offered me a “Hawick ball” - little black and yellow boiled sweets like the rolls of “humbugs” we used to eat as kids that he maintained were good for the voice.

Attending a practice was typical of McLaren. He had his own system of being able to have key information to hand immediately and his preparation was legendary – once telling me that “an hour’s preparation is worth a minute’s broadcasting.”

On another occasion at Ellis Park, in 1997 when the British Lions were on tour in South Africa, he fretted quietly to one side as he studied Russell Bennett, Andre Snyman, Henry Honiball, Pieter Rossouw and Joost van der Westhuizen looking for physical characteristics or eccentricities that might distinguish them – explaining that “they’re all tall, dark and angular and you need to be able to immediately tell the one from the other – and they’ve all had the same haircut!”

McLaren, perhaps because of the role they played in his initiation into broadcasting, had a deep love and respect for the Springboks and once, on a tour in the late 90s, provided me with a wonderful interview, which we cut into “Springbok Saga,” of his reminisces of the “great big men in green and gold.”

Fittingly he brought the curtain down on a marvellous career by calling a Six Nations match at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff in which his beloved Scotland (although you would never have said so from his commentary!) beat Wales, the crowd rising as one man to sing “For he’s a jolly good fellow!.”

How sad that my first column of the new year should be about his passing, but appropriate that it is about a warm human being, a true professional, a real gentleman and a great man of rugby.

He had a style and delivery of his own (see the “McLarenisms” below) that no modern rugby commentator has come close to emulating and I was privileged to have met him and to have been able to include him in “Springbok Saga.” On the Springbok forwards getting ready to pack down: “Imagine footing the meat bill for that lot.”

On Mark Andrews (or any other big fella): 6 foot 6 inches in his stockinged feet – would you believe.”

On Grant Batty: "He plays like a runaway bullet."

On Gerald Davies: "His sidestep was marvellous – like a shaft of lightning."

On David Duckham: “He could sidestep three men in a telephone box."

Other favourites:

"It’s high enough, it’s long enough AND IT’S STRAIGHT ENOUGH."

"He’s like a demented ferret up a wee drainpipe."

"He’s like a raging bull with a bad head."

"That one was a bit inebriated – just like one of my golf shots."

"He kicked that ball like it were three pounds o’ haggis."

"The All Blacks that day looked like great prophets of doom."

"My goodness, that ball’s gone so high there’ll be snow on it when it comes down.

"He’s as quick as a trout up a burn."

"Those props are as cunning as a bag o’ weasels."

"A day out of Hawick is a day wasted."

“And it’s a try by Hika the hooker from Ngongotaha (Wales v New Zealand 1980).

"I look at Colin Meads and see a great big sheep farmer who carried the ball in his hands as though it was an orange pip."

"I’ve hardly ever had to pay to get in (the best thing in his view about 50 years of commentary)