Ray French: icon who spread good word of rugby league beyond the north

Times

4 days ago

When Alan Tait, a Lion in rugby union and league, published his autobiography, there were two forewords: one by Bill McLaren, one by Ray French. They were the voices of their codes. 'Only those who, like myself, crossed the once-great divide between rugby union and rugby league can appreciate the nerves experienced by a former 15-a-side international as he waits to take the field before an often highly critical audience in the 13-a-side code,' French wrote. 'Whatever a player's skills, speed, mental toughness or attitude in union, he stands a naked man on the touchlines of rugby league.'
Ray French's death at the age of 85, announced on Saturday, is a passing of sadness for rugby league, but it should be marked across the divide. He played for England as a lock forward in the 1961 Five Nations before turning professional, winning four caps for Great Britain. French didn't even have to move towns, for he was a man of St Helens, where — so he said — they didn't care much if you played union for England or were a Lions team-mate of Willie John McBride and Dickie Jeeps, as he might have been in 1962 had he stayed. It was all league.
French's voice then carried the 13-man game across Britain as the BBC's voice of rugby league, calling the Challenge Cup finals from 1982 to 2008. He was the successor to Eddie Waring, who was a light-entertainment figure impersonated by Mike Yarwood but divisive as a reinforcer of stereotypes.
In Tony Hannan's biography of Waring, French explained his approach to the role. 'You have to engage with every viewer, not just those who live in the north of England,' he said. 'Of the people watching, 85 per cent aren't from rugby league country. The biggest proportion comes from down south or in Wales or Scotland or wherever.
'People have said to me, 'Ray, why do you always say players come from such and such a place?' It's because people don't know. You might know in Wigan or Warrington that he's from St Pats, but nobody in Hackney Wick knows that, do they?'
Those, like me, who didn't know their St Pats [an amateur rugby league club in Wigan] from their St Helens tuned into this slightly alien form of rugby on a Saturday afternoon and had French to explain the action. It was fascinating to discover — only in recent years — that French was a rugby man with time for both variants, even if league was his natural home.
French wrote about and coached the 15 and 13-man games, content to praise and criticise alike and to refer to diehards on either side as 'bigoted'. My Kind of Rugby: Union and League came out in 1979. Ten years later there was More Kinds of Rugby. French liked that union retained a gulf between forwards and backs, but believed it overly orientated around set-piece tedium. Citing small club attendances in London and the north, he presciently warned that 'professionalism will present more problems to union than even its most ardent supporters can imagine'.
In union, French was not immune to the social and geographical distinctions inseparable from the story of the codes. He recalled, in Joe Hall's oral history of England players, being served lobster thermidor the night before a trial and not knowing what to do with it.
Huw Richards's The Red and the White, a history of Anglo-Welsh rivalry, tells the story of French counting snooker and rugby league as hobbies, but for a programme profile he listed them instead as squash and skiing so as not to stick out. '[Carston] Catcheside, when collecting the answers, asked where he skied,' Richards said. 'French answered 'the Bergi', and was relieved that no further information was sought. The Bergi was, in fact, a St Helens landmark, a vast spoil-heap created by glassmakers Pilkington.'
French started playing rugby on the street near his home on McFarlane Avenue, with handkerchiefs around his knees. He watched St Helens in the 1953 Challenge Cup final at Wembley, and knew of union only when he passed the 11-plus for Cowley School. He went on to Leeds University and became an English teacher, returning to Cowley to coach union and league.
John Hopkins focused a section of his 1979 book Rugby on the success of rugby at Cowley. French believed in handling and running, not kicking and scrummaging, and limited the latter practices in training. 'Rugby is like a concertina,' he said. 'It goes in and it goes out … You've got to vary your game.'
Reading French's quotes now, he strikes as the sort of inspirational coach that schools desperately need today. 'The Firsts are the key to a school's success,' he said. 'They determine a school's spirit. They are the side who appear in the local press and they are the ones the little boys are reading about. After them, the most important are the under-12s. Get a lad at 11 and you've got him for life.'
When the Ashes returns to Wembley on October 25, the clip of Jonathan Davies's famous try against Australia in 1994 will do the rounds again and French's voice will ring out. A man who crossed divides and codes into living rooms. He would often say he still liked union but league was his calling, admiring its honesty and modesty, and translating that warmth to 85 per cent of his audience. He loved the game and the game loved him.
'Whatever happens, whatever the future for the oval ball, I have no doubt that it will continue to give pleasure to countless thousands,' French wrote in 1989. 'Hopefully, whatever code they play, coach, or commentate upon they will receive as much satisfaction as I have done from my involvement with the greatest game of all — rugby.'