Second, she reminded everyone concerned that the rugby league, especially Origin, sounded better when Warren called her, just as cricket sounded better when Richie Benaud held the microphone.
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It was a point that his Nine colleague, Phil Gould, made in the epilogue to Warren’s best-selling autobiography, The Voice.
“Ray Warren is the voice of the game,” Gould wrote. “There will never be another.”
As for Warren, his career began when he was six years old and he accidentally knocked over a marble pot and started yelling at them as if they were racehorses while dancing on the porch.
Carbine! Playboy! Tulloch!
He became a police officer in the ACT, but soon began broadcasting 2LF to Young alongside a young Ken Sutcliffe before spending the big time as the No. 3 in the 2 GB race behind his hero, Ken Howard and Johnny Tapp.
The voice of rugby league Ray Warren after being inducted into the NRL Hall of Fame in 2019. Credit: Getty
He started calling the rugby league on the radio, then on television for the Ten Network before being abandoned after refusing to cover the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics for fear of flying.
Nine resurrected him when Kerry Packer bought the rugby league rights in the early 1990s and never looked back, his velvet voice as welcome as a cup of hot chocolate or a soft cognac as he sat in front of the TV. on a cold Friday night.
Warren attributed the theory of “light and shadow”; Hard and serious commentary mixed with colorful verbiage that set the stage for the spectator, which took us right there to the stadium.
He applied it to 99 origins, 45 grand finals, three Melbourne Cups, swimming at the London Olympics and more horse racing than I would like to remember.
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He was always encouraged by his nervous energy, but in recent years he had been worried about making mistakes and “making a fool of himself.” He had seen his heroes endure too long and was determined not to make the same mistake.
Warren came out of the comment box after last year’s NRL grand final knowing it was his last call.
That it took him six months to make it official shows how much he loved his code, his peers, and most of all his craft.
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