An appreciation by Doug Gillon a Watsonian whose own rugby career was cut short by injury

The Scribe of athletics writes on the Voice of rugby

Bill McLaren; The voice of rugby

Published on 20 Jan 2010
There’s a room named after Bill McLaren at Hawick Rugby Club, whose colours he wore when tuberculosis robbed him of a Scotland cap, and almost his life.

There’s the McLaren press gallery at Murrayfield, with a battery of photographs celebrating the career of the iconic commentator.

However, there will forever remain a place in the hearts of rugby followers for the man who for generations was the Voice of Rugby.

He was one of a remarkable BBC team of peerless artists who seemed to defy age: Peter O’Sullivan (racing), David Coleman (athletics), Dan Maskell (tennis), Harry Carpenter (boxing), Brian Johnston (cricket), Murray Walker (F1), and Henry Longhurst (golf).

He was a columnist for The Glasgow Herald and then The Herald from 1961 to 2003.

He was recruited by our former sports editor, John Downie, only one of many who tried and failed to amend his inimitable style – long sentences which were a discipline to read, but inevitably proved grammatically correct. More pertinently, his columns unerringly predicted the key element of matches, deadly perceptive and tactically aware even before they were played.

He was unfailingly kind to successive young sub-editors who would phone him, not daring to amend his sacrosanct prose.

“That’s grand, son. That’ll dae fine” – his invariable response to their suggestions.

His research was legendary, and has been copied by succeeding generations of commentators and hacks.

The sheet he prepared for matches was invented decades before the spreadsheet, but that’s essentially what it was.

He would show examples to novice reporters who visited his Hawick home. Many less than half the 86 years at which he died yesterday still copy these.

The Herald’s Bill McMurtrie recalled a match in the 1970s, sharing the press box at Dundee High School’s Mayfield for a match between the Anglos and All Blacks. Condensation was so bad the window had to be opened to see the action. The rain drove in, and Bill’s sheet was soon a multi-coloured mess. Yet he hardly faltered. Everything was committed to memory.

At Jedburgh, he once pulled out a cutting from The Herald Letters page, showing it to McMurtrie and pointing out that the first sentence was 100 words, with the verb the penultimate one. Why could he not get away with this? Because the sports department had no control over the letters, he was told.

His career behind the microphone began with table tennis on hospital radio, and continued in tandem with work as a pe teacher until 1987. He made his radio debut in 1952 (Inter-Cities between Glasgow and Edinburgh), and his TV one in 1959.

He was a flanker and had a trial for Scotland in 1947, seeming on the verge of a cap when TB cut him down. “I was desperately ill and fading fast when the specialist asked five of us to be guinea pigs for a new drug called streptomycin,” he recalled. Only two survived.

He met his wife, Bett, that year, on a blind date at the local town hall. They had two children. Daughter Janie succumbed to cancer in 2000, while Linda is married to former internationalist Alan Lawson.

When Lawson memorably scored a try against England in 1976, the famed McLaren impartiality didn’t falter.

He was commentating aged seven. “I wrote out match reports of imaginary games in huge ledgers … a huge record of glorious Scottish victories: Scotland v England – we won eight Grand Slams against them, and we murdered the Rest of the World 86-5,” he once told The Herald.

“Then I would go outside our home at Salisbury Avenue, in Hawick, and act out these

matches. I’d kick off for the opposition, field the ball for Scotland and then pass out to myself, before scoring the try. It was bloody exhausting, I can tell you!”

He retained that boyish enthusiasm, and humour. He described an impromptu game during war ser vice with the Royal Artillery at Monte Casino, and of thinking an Italian side would be a pushover when they played them. “But when they came out and looked like the Vatican’s Swiss Guard …” – his prophetic warning on the eve of Scotland’s Six Nations defeat.

The doyen of the rugby media, untouched by his status, armed himself with his beloved Hawick Balls (the local confectionery) and a couthy and quirky idiomatic style in his Borders baritone.

They will miss him down Hawick way, and in every corner of the globe where rugby folk congregate. There will be no wee bits of argy-bargy. McLaren was simply the best.

The voice of rugby;

Born October 16, 1923;

Died January 19, 2010.

This article was originally posted on 20-Jan-2010, 08:40 by Hugh Barrow.
Last updated by Hugh Barrow on 20-Jan-2010, 08:41.