The Voice of Rugby: My Autobiography - Hardcover

Mclaren, Bill

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593051394 ISBN 13: 9780593051399

Publisher: Bantam Press, 2004

Synopsis

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.

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From the Back Cover

Just before the start of the 2002 Wales versus 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 with Bill McLaren's fifty years' experience at the BBC, commentating on the most dramatic moments rugby has ever seen. Here Bill talks frankly about the sport he loves, as well as his personal life. He speaks movingly and for the first time of the tragic death of his younger daughter from cancer aged forty-six, her three years of agony and the trauma of her final day. Bill wanted to stay at her bedside but she insisted he carry out a commentating duty in Edinburgh. After the match he rushed back to the hospital, but she had died that afternoon while he was on air.
McLaren himself almost died of tuberculosis in his youth. Here he tells of the nineteen months he spent in hospital crying himself to sleep each night as they took away his friends who had died that day. He was certain he would be next. What kept him going were the regular visits from his sweetheart, Bette, who soon afterwards became his wife. Commentating on his fellow patients' ping-pong matches helped him to develop skills that would come in useful later in life...
Bill has excellent memories of his war years and recalls some harrowing times as a forward observation spotter in Italy when he came within inches of being killed by German snipers. He also vividly remembers leading his men into a small northern Italian town where they discovered hundreds of corpses - men, women and children - piled up in the square. That was the day I became a man, rather quickly,' he says. He was nineteen.
As well as 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. Bill McLaren's story amounts to a history of the game itself. It reaffirms his status as something of a global treasure.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bantam Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0593051394
• ISBN 13: 9780593051399
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304