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\u00a9 BBC<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n We\u2019re nearing the end of the 2024 Six Nations rugby championship and my mental health feels more kicked around than the ball in the matches.\u00a0 Up until the Saturday just past, the two teams I support, Ireland and Scotland, had been doing well and I was entertaining hopes that the championship would conclude with them at the top of the table.\u00a0 But what a difference a Saturday afternoon makes. \u00a0Ireland got beaten by England, the team nobody wants to get beaten by. \u00a0Against all expectations, Scotland lost to Italy, the team regarded as the one in the championship \u2018making up the numbers\u2019 and who usually finish bottom.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Anyhow, aside from the anguish…\u00a0 The championship reminds me yet again of how much I miss being able to watch an international rugby match and at the same time listen to the knowledgeable and dulcet tones of Bill McLaren.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Although McLaren, who died in 2010 at the age of 86, worked as late as 2002, it was in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s that he was indisputably the voice of British rugby union.\u00a0 This was an era when sport, if you weren\u2019t at the live event itself, was viewable only on a handful of terrestrial TV channels.\u00a0 It was common for one channel to have a monopoly on broadcasting one sport and, by extension, for one commentator to have a monopoly on talking about that sport.\u00a0 Hence, in my youth, it was almost impossible to see horse racing without hearing the posh but eerily robotic tones of Peter O\u2019Sullivan, or boxing without hearing the excitable Harry Carpenter, or Formula One without hearing the gaffe-prone Murray Walker, or rugby league without hearing the indescribable-sounding Eddie Waring.\u00a0 McLaren fulfilled this role in the world of rugby union and for me was the best sports commentator of the lot, though I\u2019m undoubtedly biased.\u00a0 Rugby has always been my favourite team sport.\u00a0 Plus McLaren came from Hawick in the Scottish Borders, the region where I spent many of my formative years.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There were three reasons for McLaren\u2019s greatness.\u00a0 Firstly, he knew his stuff.\u00a0 I remember watching a McLaren-commentated game on a pub TV in Aberdeen sometime in the 1980s.\u00a0 I was in the company of my good friend, the late Finlay McLean, and at one point, Finlay turned around to me and marvelled, \u201cHe\u2019s just steeped<\/em> in the game, isn\u2019t he?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When a try was scored, McLaren didn\u2019t just tell you the name of the player who\u2019d crossed the line.\u00a0 No, he\u2019d also observe how the player was the great-great-nephew of the man who\u2019d kicked the winning points in the legendary Hawick-Galashiels derby of 1937, or a direct descendent of the tight-head prop with the great Western Province team that\u2019d dominated South Africa\u2019s Currie Cup<\/a> in the 1890s.\u00a0 It wouldn\u2019t have surprised you if he\u2019d identified the player\u2019s granny as the stylist responsible for grooming the mutton-chop sideburns of J.P.R. Williams<\/a>, which were rugby\u2019s main contribution to fashion in the 1970s.\u00a0 McLaren seemed to know everything<\/em> about rugby.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n His knowledge was encyclopaedic, but this was backed by a conscientious and professional attitude to research.\u00a0 I read somewhere that when preparing for a game, he\u2019d cover a full sheet of foolscap with notes about each player.\u00a0 This meant that in the commentator\u2019s box he was constantly shuffling around some 30 sheets of paper.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Secondly, although he was a Scotsman and often commentated on games involving the Scottish rugby team, he was never biased.\u00a0 On the contrary, he always applauded good rugby, no matter who was playing it and even if Scotland was on the receiving end of it.\u00a0 McLaren\u2019s neutrality was especially admirable when you compared him with the international football commentators on the BBC at the time (and indeed still now), who seemed incapable of narrating an England World Cup match without speculating every second minute about whether \u2018we\u2019 could win the World Cup just like \u2018we\u2019 won it back in 1966.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Thirdly, and most importantly for me, his commentaries were laden with poetry.\u00a0 McLaren had an amusing, fanciful, frequently wonderful talent with language.\u00a0 Admittedly, he could be a tad unflattering in the turn of phrase he used to describe the over-sized players on the field.\u00a0 English prop Colin Smart \u2013 famous for getting stomach-pumped after drinking a bottle of aftershave<\/a> as a post-match lark \u2013 consisted of \u2018considerable acreage\u2019; English captain and lock Bill Beaumont looked \u2018like someone who enjoys his food\u2019; Welsh forwards Scott and Craig Quinnell were \u2018two well-nourished individuals\u2019; Scottish flanker Finlay Calder had \u2018hands like dinner plates\u2019; and Calder\u2019s gangly fellow-Scot Doddie Weir<\/a> was \u2018the lamppost of the line-out.\u2019\u00a0 As for the legendary and frankly massive New Zealand flanker Jonah Lomu<\/a>, running into him was like \u2018trying to tackle a snooker table\u2019.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a9 BBC<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n He had a fondness to likening players to animals.\u00a0 They might behave like \u2018a demented ferret\u2019 or a \u2018bag of weasels\u2019 of a \u2018raging bull with a bad head\u2019 or \u2018a whirling tsetse fly\u2019 or \u2018a runaway giraffe\u2019 or \u2018a slippery salmon\u2019.\u00a0 The Scottish scrum-half Roy Laidlaw (whose nephew Greig captained Scotland for seven years up until 2019) was as elusive as \u2018a baggy up a Borders burn\u2019 \u2013 a baggy being, to quote the Dictionary of the Scottish Language, \u2018a species of large minnow.\u2019\u00a0 Unsurprisingly for a Borders man, Scotticisms were common in his delivery.\u00a0 Rugby balls were likened to \u2018three pounds of haggis\u2019, the famously square-shouldered Scottish skipper Peter Brown was like \u2018a coo kicking over a milk pail\u2019 and an injured player sitting dejectedly at the side of the field whilst sucking on a mint was at least \u2018enjoying his sweetie.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When it came to describing the turbulent passions and physical violence often unleashed on the pitch, McLaren was amusingly euphemistic.\u00a0 Cheating was frequently described as \u2018jiggery-pokery\u2019 and punch-ups were dismissed as \u2018a bit of argy-bargy\u2019.\u00a0 I remember when fists started flying in the middle of one scrum, he commented: \u201cIt\u2019s getting a bit unceremonious<\/em> in that front row.\u201d\u00a0 And when Scottish centre Jim Renwick \u2013 whom McLaren had coached as a schoolboy \u2013 missed a kick and was caught by the camera mouthing the F-word, McLaren diplomatically remarked that he was \u2018muttering a few naughty Hawick words.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Some of his sayings became catchphrases.\u00a0 When a player prepared to kick a conversion and half the stadium made disparaging noises in the hope of distracting him and making him fluff it, McLaren would invariably remark: \u201cThere\u2019s some ill-mannered whistling.\u201d\u00a0 And when a conversion-kick made it between the posts despite being taken from a torturous angle, he\u2019d declare: \u201cIt\u2019s high enough, it\u2019s long enough and it\u2019s straight enough!\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Aware that in the Borders towns local players who\u2019d made it onto the national team were seen as heroes, he\u2019d often serenade the scorer of a Scottish try with the lines, \u201cAnd they\u2019ll be dancing on the streets of\u2026\u201d or \u201cAnd they\u2019ll be drinking his health in\u2026\u201d \u2013 Hawick, Galashiels, Kelso, Melrose, Selkirk, wherever \u2013 \u201c\u2026tonight!\u201d\u00a0 As an honorary Borderer, I\u2019d say they were more likely to be drinking his health than dancing in the streets.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n McLaren\u2019s manner and delivery were immensely relaxed and comforting, but his early life had been no bed of roses.\u00a0 As a young World War II serviceman, he had to endure the Battle of Monte Cassino<\/a>, of which one eyewitness said, \u201cThe men were so tired that it was a living death.\u00a0 They had come from such a depth of weariness that I wondered if they would quite be able to make the return to the lives and thoughts they had known.\u2019 \u00a0McLaren himself described Monte Cassino as a \u2018vision of hell on earth.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n After the war, he was diagnosed as having tuberculosis, which put a prompt end to any hopes he had of becoming a rugby internationalist.\u00a0 TB was then considered incurable and he wasn\u2019t expected to survive, but he and four fellow sufferers agreed to be guinea pigs for the trials of a new drug, streptomycin.\u00a0 Thanks to this treatment he recovered, but three of the four other volunteers died.\u00a0 It was while he was convalescing that he produced his first sports commentaries \u2013 describing table-tennis matches over the hospital radio.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n McLaren was passionately attached to his hometown and famously said, \u201cA day out of Hawick is a day wasted.\u201d\u00a0 Several years ago I visited Hawick for the first time since the 1980s, and saw to my dismay how much it\u2019d deteriorated.\u00a0 Its high street was run-down and riddled with derelict properties \u2013 thanks to a faltering economy caused by the closure of local woolen mills, and also thanks no doubt to the opening of branches of Morrison\u2019s, Sainsbury\u2019s and Lidl, which\u2019d sucked the retailing life out of the place.\u00a0 My first thought was: \u201cWhat would Bill McLaren have said?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a9 From rugbyrelics.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n McLaren\u2019s commentaries were emblematic of an earlier, more innocent age, when rugby was still an amateur sport and because of that it was incredibly accessible.\u00a0 This was especially true if you lived in a rugby-daft place like the Borders, where the guys you saw performing heroic deeds for Scotland on TV on Saturday afternoons existed during weekdays as mortals like everyone else.\u00a0 As a kid living there, I was delighted when the man from the electricity board who came to our house to check on a power outage was none other than Jim Renwick.\u00a0 Meanwhile, Scottish fullback Peter Dods was a joiner down the road in Galashiels and my old man, a farmer, was on nodding terms with Scottish flanker John Jeffrey, who farmed in Kelso \u2013 Jeffrey\u2019s teammates had nicknamed him \u2018the Great White Shark\u2019 but to Bill McLaren he was just \u2018the big Kelso farmer\u2019.\u00a0 And let\u2019s not forget local electrician Roy Laidlaw, whom legend has it had to rewire the public toilets in Jedburgh the Monday morning after the Scotland team he was part of won the Grand Slam in Paris.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Yes, Bill McLaren\u2019s voice evokes a simpler time in rugby, before professionalism, sponsorship, corporatism, razzmatazz and a profit-driven need to win at all costs took over.\u00a0 But homespun though his persona was, I don\u2019t believe there\u2019s been a sports commentator in the years since who\u2019s come close to matching him.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n From artuk.org<\/a> \/ \u00a9 Beltane Studios<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a9 BBC We\u2019re nearing the end of the 2024 Six Nations rugby championship and my mental health feels more kicked around than the ball in the matches.\u00a0 Up until the Saturday just past, the two teams I support, Ireland and Scotland, had been doing well and I was entertaining hopes that the championship … <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/BMcL-at-BBC-300x214.jpg\")
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