{"id":24073,"date":"2025-07-26T17:32:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T17:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/24073\/"},"modified":"2025-07-26T17:32:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T17:32:08","slug":"ray-french-remembering-a-late-dual-rugby-code-icon-on-and-off-the-pitch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/24073\/","title":{"rendered":"Ray French: Remembering a late dual rugby code icon on and off the pitch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Nine years later, Jonathan Davies outstripped Australia&#8217;s rapid-quick Brett Mullins to score a brilliant try &#8211; again on Wembley&#8217;s grand stage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;He&#8217;s got the head back! The Welshman is in for a magnificent try.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">One of the most memorable Great Britain tries, called perfectly.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Perhaps the greatest moment was his call of Martin Offiah&#8217;s rip-roaring length of the field effort under the twin towers for Wigan in the 1994 Challenge Cup final against Leeds, just months before Davies&#8217; heroics.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Offiah was goosed having touched down, barely able to acknowledge his feat as he sank to his knees with emotion. French had the words.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;That must rank among the finest ever seen on this ground.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Captured to perfection.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Like all commentators, he had his pet lines. &#8220;He&#8217;s going for the line!&#8221; being a famous one, and his penchant for the combo of a player&#8217;s weight and amateur club was another little idiosyncrasy that fans grew to love.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The package of a sing-song voice-note forged by his St Helens upbringing, the richness of his vocabulary, his authenticity as someone steeped in rugby league and his brilliant rapport on the mic with Joe Lydon, Maurice Bamford and former team-mate Murphy, and in later years those he had called home to score such as Davies, helped establish Ray as an iconic voice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nine years later, Jonathan Davies outstripped Australia&#8217;s rapid-quick Brett Mullins to score a brilliant try &#8211; again on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-24073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}