by Ray French, who died at the age of 85, was a double international rugby striker who later became the voice of the rugby league as a BBC commentator for 30 years.
By joining the BBC in 1981, the French had the unvatable task of succeeding the extrovert Eddie Waring, which for three decades had simplified the complexities of the Rugby League for South viewers, and whose memorable slogans, including “Up and under” (a high-booth) (sent for a bad behavior) Replaces for impermestres.
The Frenchman, then employed as the English master and rugby coach by the Cowley Grammar School in his native St Helens, thought that he was the victim of a farce when he was told that the BBC wanted him to take over as commentator of the Rugby League. The French had been summoned to the phone in a Chinese restaurant in Melbourne, where he directed a school rugby tour in Australia. He assumed that it was one of his students to a mischief until he heard the sound of cricket in the background.
“I am in the press in Headingley by watching Ian Botham Bash the Australians and it was a work devil to find you,” assured him the director of sports of the BBC Nick Hunter. “Now, would you like to take over from Eddie?”
The French then commented on the 27 final of the Challenge Cup between 1982 and 2008. During his first Wembley final, he nervously swallowed a large bottle of water before going to the TV station in the stand, to be informed that the nearest toilets were at a certain distance. He was forced to relieve himself in a bucket while Widnes and Hull put themselves on the ground.
He was also the first journalist of the today’s rugby league when Eddie Shah launched the newspaper in 1986, and a regular correspondent in sports newspapers. His latest role on television was in the 2013 World Cup, but he continued to report the rugby league matches on the BBC Radio Merseyside until 2019.
The Frenchman was a champion articulated and passionate about the sport he had learned to play as a seven-year-old boy in St Helens with handkerchiefs tied around his knees, at a time when “each street had his own team and I was director of Macfarlane avenue because I was the only one to have a bullet,” he recalls.
French has held the rugby league to be the best most honest game in the world. “I see football players riding as if they were at the door of death just because someone tapped them on the ankles; stretching on, stretching. The rugby league is a hard and hard sport played by hard men who get up from the ground and go up directly,” he said on a daily newspaper, adding that “the best player in the world”.
Raymond James French was born in St Helens on December 23, 1939, the only child of James (known as Richard), a glassman and his wife Ellen.
Ray’s father, who had played for his amateur club United Glass Bottles against Mighty Hunslet in equality of the Challenge Cup in 1930, had been invited to sign for St Helens, but had to refuse the saints because he could not afford to get out of the changes at the bottle factory.
As a child, Ray made sure that he was at the top of his own team leaves, whom he pinned at the door of their house. “I became an attacker for the simple reason that if you were playing on the wing, you were likely to wrap yourself in the first of the gas lamps.” The children were going on a “tour” in the neighboring streets of St Helens.
At Cowley Grammar School, he discovered Chaucer, Shakespeare – and Rugby Union. After the University of Leeds, where he read English, Latin and Russian, with a diploma in education, he won his first cap in England as a locking in a 6-3 defeat by Wales at Cardiff Arms Park in 1961. He played throughout the five nations championship this year alongside Dickie Jeeps, Richard Sharp, Mike Weston and Bev Risman.
The French recruit supposed that its expenses would cover tea and a sandwich on its train in London; He was forced to return eight pence to the severe president of the selectors of England.
He found rugby a culture shock in other respects. “I did not know that they held a dinner and a ball after each match. I had never wore an evening costume in my life, so I had to borrow one,” he recalls. He invented “ski and squash” like his hobbies for the press, because they seemed “chic” that the rugby league and the snooker.
Although the Frenchman is a solid candidate to join the 1962 British lions tour in South Africa, he decided to return to the league and avenge his father’s thwarted ambitions by signing with St Helens for £ 5,000 – rejecting more lucrative offers from Leeds, Oldham and Wigan.
He represented St Helens from 1961 to 1967 – Fighting Wigan 21-2 during the 1966 CUP challenge final before a crowd of 98,000 people in Wembley – before moving to Widnes, in the colors of which he played for Great Britain during the 1968 World Cup. He was also one of three winning teams in 1961, 1963 and 1964. He retired in 1971.
French has taught throughout his player career, first at Fairfield School in Widnes, then to his Alma Mater, Cowley in St Helens. As a schoolmaster, he observed, he was sort of a quirk in his first Pack of St Helens, which included a Drayman, a carpenter, two minors and an scrap merchant.
He was appointed MBE for services at the Rugby League in 2011. His books included my kind of rugby (1978).
Ray French married Helen Bromilow, who survived him with their daughter Susan and their son Gary, who played Rugby Union for St Helens, Bath, Orrell and London Welsh, and represented the Lancashire, northern England and England “A” as a whore.
Ray French, born December 23, 1939, died July 26, 2025
