By STEVE MASCORD
IT’S the end of May, 1994 … Brisbane, Australia.
After a long journey from Manchester, the British media corps are tucking into some lunch at their digs up on Wickham Terrace, not far from Roma Street Station. Coming up on Wednesday: the World Club Challenge between the Brisbane Broncos and Wigan at ANZ Stadium in the south of the city.
Journalists are not yet brow-beaten into funding their own travel and forced by the decline of print advertising to stay in flea-ridden bolt-holes. This trip would be so free-spirited that when, after the match, Broncos CEO John Ribot let slip during a long lunch on a paddle steamer (with officials of the Denver Broncos) the news of a looming News Limited takeover of the sport, none of the press would be sober enough to remember and report it.
And part of the Brit press pack enjoying the winter sunshine was 54-year-old BBC broadcaster Ray French. With four Test caps to his name in each code and more than 200 appearances for St Helens, he had retired a Widnes player 23 years before, playing most of his career in the second row.
Feeling the effects of jet lag, the XXXX and a full belly, the gangly Today columnist makes his excuses and – slightly disoriented – negotiated his way to a room he had only occupied long enough to unpack and hang up a few shirts. ‘Frenchy’ pushed against the door, walked in, stripped to his Y-fronts and passed out immediately – starfish style – on his bed.
Your correspondent, meanwhile, was 25 and had just moved from Australian Associated Press to the Sydney Morning Herald in a significant career advancement. They weren’t going to send the newbie to Brisbane for this game (especially with no NSW teams involved) and they weren’t even going to use their regular Brisbane sports correspondent, Ian Arnold. Instead, travelling British writer and raconteur Dave Hadfield would be filing for the SMH and that was that.
I had been in the job a matter of weeks and was looking forward to covering a Kangaroo Tour. It behove me to keep my head down and not cause waves. But this was the World Club Challenge so I did what I would go onto do many times later. I booked a day off on the Wednesday and went anyway, probably blowing my first pay cheque from the new gig on travel.
It’s tempting to say Ray French, who died last week age 85 after a battle with dementia, wasn’t just a player turned broadcaster but the voice of the sport north of the equator – Rex Mossop and Ray Warren rolled into one. He called every Challenge Cup final for the BBC on TV from 1982 to 2008.
But to him, he was just a player turned broadcaster (and columnist). He kept his teaching job and even though he was heard in millions of lounge rooms around the world, to him he was just ‘keeping his hand in’.
Ray was a warm, friendly and inquisitive man who was a delight on trips to France, New Zealand and all points in between – up for a winery visit or one of those long lunches on a paddle steamer. I can recall being very, very proud of myself to be drinking wine in an Avignon hotel room with Ray French and the great Daily Express journalist Alan Thomas.
I had first met Ray when the 1988 Lions visited Australia and when I worked in London for AAP in 1990, I loved watching French call French rugby league on a satellite station in the office (instead of writing about politics and celebrities, which is what I was supposed to have been doing).
Ray would call the games 2025 style – that is, off the television. I’m sure he would have gone to the south of France every week if asked. Anyway, Ray once told me he and his co-commentator called the wrong team for an entire half. They didn’t get the names of the clubs wrong, they got them about-face. That is, the Albi no.1 was named as the XIII Catalans fullback, as was the winger, centre, etc, etc – for an entire half.
“How on earth did you fix that?” 21-year-old me asked. “Oh,” said Ray, “we just swapped back at halftime as if nothing happened.”
In 1992, during the early days of mobile phones, I asked why he wasn’t using one at Wollongong Showground for the Lions Tour match against Illawarra. I am pretty sure Ray responded that they “don’t reach that far” back to England. It sounded delightfully naive at the time – but to this day you can’t trust 4G at a packed stadium so Ray knew something we didn’t!
In 2015, your correspondent discovered he was entitled to a UK passport by virtue of my biological mother – whom I never met – being born here. I needed a couple of referees (yes, we did the Fred Lindop jokes) and of course Ray – being such an eminent citizen – was an obvious choice. How could they deny me citizenship if Ray French said I was kosher?
Alas the gum on the return envelope was old and the signed character reference slipped out on its way back to us. So I had to get another form and catch the train to St Helens and meet Ray in person, before coming straight back to London.
As if having to write nice things about someone once isn’t bad enough …. He must have felt like he was meeting surreptitiously in a cafe to turn professional again.
But no-one who knew Ray will ever tire of saying nice things about him, as all the tributes this last week have proven.
Ray French was also an enchanting storyteller, which is how I know about the episode described at the beginning of this article.
You see, when near-naked Ray arose from the deepest of sleeps on his first day in Brisbane ahead of Wigan’s storied 20-14 victory 31 years ago, he decided he’d better put on some fresh clothes.
And when he walked in his undies to the hotel room closet, he was startled to discover it populated entirely by dresses.