A true man of rugby who taught TV viewers to love his sport

The soft Border burr – never heard to better effect than when

identifying Scottish players in the black-and-white days of Rollo, Campbell-Lamerton, Chisholm, Hastie, Stagg and ten Bos – gently talked us into the game in the Fifties.

He explained the laws, described the scene and the importance of the encounter and told us of the feats of the players in a way that it is hard to explain to anyone brought up in today's cacophony of jingles, promos, pre- and post-match interviews, endless analysis and pointless quotes.

Bill McLaren died yesterday at the age of 86 and a link with different days went with him. That link came to an official end in 2002 when he commentated on his last match for the BBC – Wales v Scotland in Cardiff.

The announcer surprised the great man by asking the packed crowd to acknowledge his contribution to the game; to a man and woman, president, boy and steward, the gathering rose and "For he's a jolly good fellow" echoed round the Millennium Stadium.

High in his gantry, ready to roll, surrounded as ever by his copious notes, compiled diligently over the days leading up to the match and carrying every conceivable detail about everyone concerned in the match, McLaren's mouth was dry as a referee's heart.

"Cue, Bill," the producer chimed and, true to his pedigree, McLaren went to work, ignoring the lump in the throat, the tears welling in his eyes and the flashing across his memory of so many great moments in the preceding 50 years.

That was Bill McLaren, the professional broadcaster who was a PE

teacher by profession, never happier than when teaching youngsters in his home town of Hawick the rudiments of the game and helping several, including Jim Renwick, Tony Stanger and Colin Deans, become Scottish internationals.

McLaren himself could have reached such heights as a player, earning a place in the Hawick first XV as a back-row forward before being called away to fight in the Second World War. His training for battle came at Catterick and he memorably wrote: "They just knocked hell out of you in the hope that by the end of it you would understand and accept

discipline.

"Once your initiation was over, your cheeks had sunk into your face and you had a raw, hungry mean look about you. I suppose they reasoned that even if we couldn't kill hundreds of Germans single-handed, just by looking so bloody grim we might persuade a few to surrender if we got close enough."

The war affected McLaren deeply – he just missed being hit by a

sniper's bullet and never forgot the sight of discovering 1,500 dead

Germans in an Italian village. By the end of it, he was suffering from tuberculosis and recovery took 19 months; his hopes of playing international rugby were over.

He passed time as he was convalescing commentating on table-tennis matches in hospital and later, as he made his way as a teacher, began to work on the local newspaper, the Hawick Express, reporting on rugby matches.

That was the beginning. It was not long before his talent was spotted by the BBC and, after a daunting microphone test, his second career was launched.

Televised rugby was in its infancy, commentating positions were cold and sometimes dangerous places but McLaren was in his element – "all at someone else's expense and for a very acceptable salary," he commented.

Conditions changed over the years, colour pictures made the game much easier to follow, McLaren worked superbly with colleagues like Gareth Edwards and Bill Beaumont, players he had watched and applauded in

their prime and now helped to make their way in broadcasting. The

teacher in him shone through again.

He was to take his place, microphone in hand, on rugby grounds wherever the game is played and he was always accorded the most hospitable of welcomes, as befits a true man of rugby.

He had many proud moments, perhaps the pinnacle being the day his son-in-law Alan Lawson scored two tries for Scotland against England. He regretted to the end the decision by rugby union's administrators to make the game professional but was delighted to see two of his grandsons play the game for a living – Scotland and Gloucester scrum-half Rory Lawson and Edinburgh utility back Jim Thompson.

It was a measure of the esteem in which he was held within the game that in 2001 McLaren became the first non-international to be inducted

into the International Rugby Hall of Fame.

He was awarded his MBE in 1992, an OBE in 1995 and a CBE in 2003 but he will be remembered most of all for what he taught not one but several generations.