McLaren's status as a global treasure.

Bill McLaren was 81 yesterday. The greatest rugby broadcaster of them all delivered his final commentary on the 2002 Wales v Scotland match in Cardiff. Before the game, the stadium announcer asked people to stand and acknowledge McLaren's great contribution to the sport. The whole ground rose, leaving McLaren choking back the tears.

Sadly, he seems to have aged more in the two years of his retirement than he did in the previous 50. His memory of past players and games is razor sharp while Brian O’Driscoll is a fleeting shadow. To talk with him about the game of rugby remains the same wonderful pleasure that listening to him on television used to be. McLaren is Scottish with a large S and conservative with a small C. One imagines that even had he not retired because of age he might have given up commentating on the professional game for which he little empathy.
He was first and remained all his working life, a teacher of physical education at Hawick Academy in the Borders of Scotland. Before broadcasting, he had served in the Royal Artillery during World War 2 and after landing at Anzio he was involved in the bloody slog through Italy to Rome. He remembers vividly the shelling of the ancient abbey at Montecassino

Just before the start of the 2002 Wales v Scotland match in Cardiff, the stadium announcer asked people to stand and acknowledge Bill McLaren's great contribution to the sport. The whole ground rose, leaving McLaren choking back the tears. Then came a voice in his ear: 'Cue, Bill…’
Coping with his emotions on that day was obviously not straightforward, even for a commentator of Bill McLaren’s experience, used to being caught up in some of the most dramatic moments rugby has ever seen. But Bill also talks frankly about the greatest tragedy of his life: the death of his younger daughter from cancer at 46, the three-years of agony and the trauma of her final day. Bill wanted to stay at her bedside but she insisted he go and carry out a commentating duty in Edinburgh on the Saturday afternoon. He did so, rushed back to the hospital, but she had died that afternoon while he was on air.

McLaren, himself, had almost died of TB in his youth and he tells of the days and nights when he hid under the sheets in bed at the Scottish hospital where he was kept for 19 months, ‘crying myself to sleep each night as they took away my friends who had died that day. I was certain I would be next’. He has excellent memories of his war years and delves deep to recall some harrowing times as a forward observation spotter when he came within inches of being killed by a German sniper. Later, he also remembers leading his men one day into a small northern Italian town where they discovered 1500 corpses piled up in the square. ‘That was the day I became a man, rather quickly,’ he says. He was 21.
As well reliving the highlights of his illustrious career as a commentator, Bill talks of the game today and his regrets that rugby went professional. He is a fierce critic of what this has led to and fears for the future health and safety of rugby players because he regards the modern game as dangerously physical. His story amounts to a history of the game itself and reaffirms McLaren’s status as something of a global treasure.