
LIKE everyone else in Rugby League, I was so sorry to hear of Ray French’s passing when the news broke on Saturday, although after a long battle against dementia, which is such a cruel and arbitrary disease.
Over the years I had many conversations with Ray about Rugby League, agreeing with him about 80 percent of the time and agreeing to differ on some of the other issues we didn’t see eye to eye on.
Ray was a great traditionalist in many respects. He hated squad numbers, for example, while I endorsed them.
I first became aware of him in 1966, when St Helens came to Wakefield in the first round of the Challenge Cup on 26 February that year and won 10-0, with Ray having a great game that made me, as an avid adolescent Wakefield supporter, not too kindly disposed towards him. He would subsequently be part of the St Helens team that won the Cup and League double that season.
But when I was the Chairman of the Student Rugby League in the 1980s my attitude changed. Ray was commentating for the BBC he was always extremely helpful and would talk and write about the student game with obvious enthusiasm whenever he could.
His book ‘My Kind of Rugby’ was one of the relatively small number of ‘serious’ books about rugby of either code at the time of its publication by Faber in 1979. For me it was a hugely enjoyable and informative read long before I had thought of getting into Rugby League publishing myself.
Ray was also a great after-dinner speaker, with a wonderful array of stories, particularly about his former team-mate Alex Murphy, and he was also a very good speaker in more formal situations.
Ray christened our former columnist Garry Schofield as The Poacher, as Garry himself reminded me – “he’s got the legs, he’s got the pace, it’s a try”.
Ray commentated for BBC TV from 1981 to 2008, but carried on with Radio Merseyside with his great friend Alan Rooney until 2019.
I always used to look forward to going to Cup Finals and Grand Finals to sit down with Ray to discuss the state of the game and I missed him when he stopped coming.
The press box at Wembley or Old Trafford seemed a lesser place without him being in it.
My sincere condolences to his family and friends.
We will run an obituary of Ray in next week’s issue.