Legendary rugby commentator, Bill McLaren, died on Tuesday at the age of 86.
McLaren, known to many as the voice of rugby started commentating on BBC Radio in 1953 before moving to television in 1959.
There are many reasons one falls in love with the game of rugby, the voice of Bill McLaren was one of them.
The game played in heaven, now has a voice to go with it.
Rest in Peace.
January 20th, 2010 at 8:27 am
Very sad news, as a kid learning the game I loved this man. Great lost to the world and rugby.
May you rest in peace.
January 20th, 2010 at 9:09 am
RIP
My best memory is him commentating on the Barbarians game – when Danie Gerber and Carel Du Plessis combined to score a try starting in their own 22.
(as I remember the words)
“That woold soorrrrly gu dun as one of the best trrys everrr scorrred”
Appologies to my way of sounding the words of Bil McLaren as I hear them in my head NOW !!!
I love listening to that old video
and that maybe says it all how I feel about the man
“love listening to a video”
January 20th, 2010 at 9:20 am
RIP BiLL McLaren
it sEEms that he had a very gOOde iNNings!
“The game played in heaven, now has a voice to go with it.”
January 20th, 2010 at 11:07 am
Damn
I listened to him on John Robbie’s show this morning
Man this is sad
The way Gerard Viviers brought rugby to my little Afrikaans ears is the way Bill MacLaren told me about the Five Nations
About people needing to be dislodged by the Highland Light Infantry because of their defence
How Andre Joubert was the “Rolls Royce of fullbacks”
And my favorite
“Pieter Doorant, whose nickname is Os and that means Ox because he’s as strong as an ox and that he surely is”
RIP Old Bill
If I get to heaven one day there will be Supersport with two commentary channels
One with Spiekeries in Afrikaans and the other with you in your best border Scottish English
January 20th, 2010 at 1:20 pm
Yip one of the greats, no-one better and fair to all.
Good innnings as OO says.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:49 pm
Reply to The Brand @ 9:09 am:
Will watch that video – thanks!
Greatest there ever will be.
Incomparable.
And a real pro: Colleague yesterday
told me how Bill came to him to
get the pronunciation of Andre
Venter correct – not Wenter, like
all the others did.
Wish Stransky would become a pro
and stop calling Beanpole
Andre wendenburgh.
Capistagno gets it right, so
what is his excuse?
January 20th, 2010 at 3:50 pm
My best memory is him commentating on the Barbarians game – when Danie Gerber and Carel Du Plessis combined to score a try starting in their own 22.
(as I remember the words)
========
ANYBODY KNOWS WHERE THAT
VIDEO CLIP IS?
January 20th, 2010 at 3:59 pm
Reply to Boertjie @ 3:50 pm:
Boertjie it was an old video – 101 Rugby Tries
Often when I visited my parents home – I would watch that video – it got “burned” into me mind
January 20th, 2010 at 5:43 pm
Reply to Boertjie @ 1:49 pm:
yip the story was that he’s go to great lengths to ensure that he got the pronunciations of all players right, especially the SA players, who he was always mighty impressed with.
often the little things that make a difference.
January 20th, 2010 at 9:41 pm
I loved the way he called a scrum a “Put In”, as in “The Sprrrringboks has the Poetin on the Scawtish 22″.
RIP Mr Mclaren.
January 21st, 2010 at 8:15 am
From Paul Dobson:
Bill McLaren, rugby football’s most revered commentator, the ‘voice of rugby’, has died, leaving rugby richer for his many years of commentating and poorer for his passing. He was 86.
Somehow you feel a family member has died, and if rugby is a family it is true. This is the death of a close and special relative, a favourite uncle. It is in a way surprising that this man, so loyal to his family, his Hawick, his Borders and his Scotland should have been so accepted and loved by all of rugby. It is not really surprising because those tight loyalties he had extended to the whole of the game. He loved rugby football and respected it; in turn rugby football loved and respected him.
Once at Cardiff a sign read: “Bill McLaren is Welsh.” It made sense, for Bill McLaren belonged to all rugby and all rugby was proud of him.
He loved rugby football and respected it and so he went to meticulous trouble to get the minutiae of commentating right, down to the correct pronunciation of players’ names. Once he and his wife Bette were there to meet the arriving Springboks to find out how Ruben Kruger wanted his surname pronounced. because he loved and respected the game’s players and because he was so thoroughly prepared, he did not have to resort to smartness and nastiness; he was not a man for the cheap shot.
He was methodical. He used playing cards to recall players’ names by their numbers. He did research, for he believed that to commentate you needed to be as prepared and keyed up as players. There is a story that once he was in the commentators’ box at Murrayfield for the Sevens. Latvia were playing and two younger commentators thought they would play a trick on him. They pretended to be commentating while Latvia were playing. Just as a Latvian player had a run down the wing they said: “And now we’ll pass you over to Bill McLaren.” Without missing beat McLaren took over and was able to tell the audience that it was no surprise that this Latvian was a good player as his father had been a famous flank when playing for Riga.
He had method and he had style. Many of his sayings became famous – “That’s coming down with snow on it”; “The scrumhalf is getting ball delivered to him like chocolates out of a machine”; “He’s like a demented ferret up a wee drainpipe”; “He’s as quick as a trout up a burn”; “It’s high enough, it’s long enough AND IT’S STRAIGHT ENOUGH!”; “When they get going, it’s like watching cattle stampede, huge fellows who thunder about the paddock like mad rhinos” [Springbok pack in 1951; “He plays like a runaway bullet" [Grant Batty of New Zealand].
And he had a sense of humour. Asked the advantages of being a commentator, he said in that gentle Scottish voice: “I’ve hardly ever had to pay to get in.”
Bill McLaren grew up loving rugby, learning about it from his eager Dad and the club at Hawick and then up at Murrayfield. He played, and then World War II broke out and he served in the Royal Artillery in North Africa and Egypt. The disaster struck when he contracted tuberculosis in 1948.
At the time he contracted TB, Bill McLaren was 24, vice-captain of Hawick and a Scottish triallist. But his playing career was over. In fact his life was nearly over.
It was not all bad fortune. Home on demob leave in 1947 he went with his sister to a dance in the Hawick Town Hall. He spotted Bette Hill. He wrote: “People tend to laugh about love at first sight but there has never been any doubt in my mind that from that very first moment that I saw Bette I was in love with her.” She saw him through TB when he was in a sanatorium in Bangour for 19 months, and they became as close as a married couple could be. He would not go to any function without Bette but they would play 18 holes of golf every day..
Bill McLaren started imitating commentators before he was a teenager but it was in a sanatorium that he first started commentating to an audience. He got patients able enough to play table tennis and similar games and he would amuse the patients with his commentating.
Out of the sanatorium he got a job on the Hawick Express whose editor, John Hood, pushed Bill McLaren into going for an audition with the BBC as a rugby commentator. The match for the test was South of Scotland vs South Africa in 1951. A career was born, brought up on love, respect and unflagging enthusiasm.
The South African centre, André Snyman, was once asked what his greatest rugby ambition was and he said: “To play in a match commentated by Bill McLaren.”
Bill McLaren and Bette had two daughters, Linda and Janie. Linda married Alan Lawson, capped 15 times for Scotland at scrumhalf, and one their three children, Rory, has played scrumhalf for Scotland. Janie married Tommo Thompson of horseracing fame and their son Jim plays in the backs for Edinburgh. It was a huge blow when Janie died of cancer in 2000 at the age of 46. He was at her bedside but she insisted that he go off to commentate. Match done, he rushed back to the hospital but she had already died.
Trained in physical education and a schoolmaster, Bill McLaren is best known as a commentator and as a commentator he travelled the world though he said: “I’m a very domesticated animal, never happier than when at home with Bette or in the company of our family.” For him every day out of Hawick was “a day wasted”.
In 1979 Bill McLaren was made MBE, OBE in 1992 and CBE in 2003. Why he was not knighted is a mystery. He was the first non-international inducted into rugby’s Hall of Fame.
William Pollock McLaren was born in Hawick on 16 October 1923. He died in the community hospital in Hawick on Tuesday, 19 January 2010. He is survived by Bette, Linda, his sons-in-law and five grandchildren.
By Paul Dobson
January 21st, 2010 at 9:05 am
Good heavens
No wonder he has such an affinity for the Springboks…
His first game he commentated on was a Bok game…
I recall watching an improbable Scotland win in 2000 or somewhere around there when Clive Woodward’s England was just starting to dlex its Wiorld Cup winning muscles when Scotland won
“There’ll be deancing in the streets of Hawick tenight!”
January 21st, 2010 at 9:08 am
I actualy had a wee tear in the eye start to form up when I read Paul Dobson’s piece…
January 21st, 2010 at 9:15 am
Reply to DavidS @ 9:08 am:
Absolutely.
Rugby has lost in my view its biggest soul to date.
This man was rugby, he represented everything we love about the game.
It is a massive loss to the game.
January 25th, 2010 at 2:00 pm
RIP Bill – what a legend, the game had a different intensity when he called it – go well