Ray Warren: The greatest league grand final I ever called … and the dullest

Recently retired Ray Warren is an iconic sports commentator with famous catch-cries like, “I’ll tell a man he is”, – but is most famed for anchoring decades of rugby league broadcasts, including 31 grand finals for Channel Nine, five for Ten, and the rest on radio. I spoke to the now 81-year-old on Friday.

Fitz: Ray! Are you enjoying retirement?

Ray: Not really, no, I’m adjusting to it – basically hanging around in the garden and trying to keep the pool clean.

Ray Warren in 1979 and (right) in 2017. “I am quite proud to be mentioned in even the same sentence as Dennis Cometti.”Credit: Fairfax Media

Fitz: How much of the NRL have you seen this season?

Ray: I’m not religious about it, but, yeah ... a lot.

Fitz: And here we are, as the seasons change, approaching yet another grand final. You’ve seen a few.

Ray: Yes, I called my first league game back in 1966 in the Riverina, and called my first Sydney grand final in the early 70s.

Fitz: That’s extraordinary, to have a commentary career spanning seven decades. Now, I want to work towards what was the greatest grand final you’ve called or seen in your extraordinary career but ...

RW: But you have to remember I had a few years out of it, calling dogs, trots and horses, whatever I could, just trying to make a living, you know.

Fitz: Ray, believe me, I know. As we’ve previously discussed, I was co-commentating with you as we called the rugby sevens one wet wintry night at the Sydney Showground, circa 1992. I could see it in your eyes, Ray, as you looked at me: you were thinking, “This has to be it, this has to be the lowest point of my career.” Was I wrong?

RW: [Laughing] You’re not wrong, but it was nothing to do with you, specifically. We were sent on a mission, you and I. And I’d never done Sevens. I’d never seen the Fijian side we were calling. What I didn’t know was, there probably wasn’t room in a 14-minute game for a co-commentator. And I came away thinking, “How rude was I?”

Fitz: And I came away thinking, “Hey, at least I worked with Ray Warren!” But let’s go on. Can you give me an overview of the greatest league grand finals you’ve seen or called, before we narrow it down to the best. When you look back on your long career, which ones are the standouts?

RW: I am not sure if I called it, but I can certainly remember seeing John Sattler in a lot of trouble for Souths in 1970 with what proved to be a broken jaw. And I’ll never forget watching the Manly/Cronulla bloody clash in ’73 – described by Ian Heads as being “as dirty as any bar-room brawl” – which Bobby Fulton took control of, personally scoring two tries. I was there again to watch Manly play six games in 25 days before they won the ’78 grand final.

Fitz: All of which, as it turned out, was a setting of the stage for the rise of Parramatta, under coach Jack Gibson.

RW: Yes, I was there to watch Brett Kenny score two tries in each grand final, ’81, ’82, ’83. I wasn’t calling the ’89 grand final between the Tigers and Raiders – as I was sort of between networks – but it was a wonderful, dramatic match. I was there for Newcastle’s last-minute win over the Sea Eagles in 1997, and Melbourne/St George in ’99 – decided by referee Bill Harrigan awarding a penalty try to the Storm in the final minute. That’s never going to leave me. That was a hell of a call for a ref and video ref to make, but they did it.

Fitz: And don’t look now, Ray, but we’ve got the Panthers/Roosters classic finish to a grand final, in 2003, as per your immortal call: “Fittler’s gone after it ... then he scoops the ball away to Byrne ... Byrne puts on a fend, then he puts on a sprint ... Sattler is chasing ... Sattler has made the tackle of the day! What a tackle by Scott Sattler!”

RW: Yeah, well, it was probably more or less the tackle of the century, as young as the century was. To be honest with you, I never thought I’d see a Sattler run that fast, and I’d like to think I was a good friend of Johnny’s, but Scott really excelled that day. Yeah, that was a memorable moment, I can assure you.

Fitz: And yet there were plenty more to come.

RW: Yes, and the most extraordinary sequence of incredible grand finals, started with Souths beating Canterbury in 2014, which began with that clash of heads between Sam Burgess and James Graham – where Burgess basically re-enacted for Souths what Sattler had done for the Rabbitohs 44 years earlier, playing on with a broken head. And the other bookend of that was Cronulla beating the Storm 14-12 in 2016, and I think my final words were, “Cronulla win it – you can turn the light off now.”

Johnny Tapp, Ken Howard and Ray Warren at Randwick racecourse in 1971.Credit: Fairfax

Fitz: Which was a wonderful reference to the famous line by Jack Gibson: “Waiting for Cronulla to win the premiership is like leaving the porch light on for Harold Holt.” On that subject, I wrote the foreword for a book collection of AFL commentator Dennis Cometti’s greatest commentary moments: “He moves through the mid-field like Pavarotti on a skateboard.” “There’s Koutoufides. More vowels than possessions today.” And Dennis was honest enough to acknowledge that some of his best lines had been previously sharpened arrows, placed in his quiver for the right moment. Did you ever do the same?

RW: Well, I am quite proud to be mentioned in even the same sentence as Cometti but, no, I said whatever came to me at the time, things like, “He’s missed it! He missed that by a boarding-house scrape of butter!”

Fitz: Which brings us back, happily enough, to the 2015 NRL grand final between the Broncos and the Cowboys, where, in the first instance, Johnathan Thurston needed a little more butter.

RW: The last five minutes of that match was just thrilling, thrilling football. It was unbelievable. Kyle Feldt scores a try right in the corner, and Johnathan Thurston’s got a conversion attempt to win the premiership. And his conversion attempt hits the upright and bounces away.

The moment: Johnathan Thurston on his way to nailing the match-winning field goal in golden point extra time in the 2015 grand final.Credit: Mark Kolbe/Getty Images

Fitz: Missed it by a boarding-house scrape of butter.

RW: They go into “golden point”. Thurston kicks off and Ben Hunt knocks on, drops the ball cold. Cowboys’ scrum. They go to the fourth tackle, off the scrum win. And you can see Thurston lurking, lurking, waiting, and now the ball’s in his hand.

Fitz: He shimmies, he shakes, he drops the ball onto his swinging right foot!

RW: He politely puts it between the big sticks and the Cowboys have got their first premiership.

Fitz: Ah, sing it again, Ray, one more time for the road: “He’s got the field goal! He’s got the premiership!”

RW: [A little dreamily] Yes, Cowboys/Broncos will be forever in my memory, particularly the last five minutes of that. I just thought, well, it doesn’t get any better than this. I walked away feeling as though that may be the highlight of all my grand final experiences.

Fitz: Well, now we are here. We are just about a decade later from that, and you’re retired. So, looking back, is your gold medallist for the best grand final ever the 2015 Cowboys-Broncos match?

Ray: Well, it certainly had the best five minutes of league I ever saw. But the rest of the match was such a high standard too, I think can say, yes, that was the best grand final I ever saw or called.

Sixty years at the microphone: Ray Warren. Credit: NRL Photos

Fitz: What about the dullest? There was a saying in my day: “A Wallaby tour is a lot like sex, in that when it’s good it is FANTASTIC, and when it’s bad ... yeah ... well, it’s still pretty good!” And I daresay the same applies to league grand finals. But do some stand out for the fact that they ... don’t stand out?

RW: [Laughing] Well, the 4-2 score line of Parramatta over Canterbury in 1986 – with Mick Cronin kicking the two goals for the Eels – is the most obvious one, but the purists would tell you that was a great battle between attack and defence, and it was just that the defence was so strong.

Fitz: OK, while you’re handing out gongs, who is the best footballer you’ve seen, in your 60 years of calling?

RW: Oh, well, I’ve answered that question 100 times.

Fitz: It hasn’t been asked until I have asked it.

RW: … but you can’t go past Wally Lewis. Look, we’re changing our tack here, and talking about football overall, rather than grand final football – but Wally dominated Origin at the highest level for a decade. And he won eight man-of-the-match awards in that decade playing for Queensland, which elevated him to a category reserved for only blokes like Andrew Johns, Bob Fulton, Graeme Langlands, Reg Gasnier, Arthur Beetson and other “immortals”.

Wally Lewis showed no thoughts of self-preservation during his celebrated playing career, but it has come at a cost.Credit: NRL Photos

Fitz: And where does that leave Penrith’s superstar, Nathan Cleary? How do you rate him among the players you’ve seen?

RW: Well, I think he’s already up in the top five. I read with interest the other day somebody saying that he’s possibly the best footballer ever and that may well come true. Nathan’s just incredible. You’ve only got to go back to last year’s grand final to know how good he is, and what he’s done at the end of this season so far is also a mark of the talent he has which may see him become the greatest of all time.

Fitz: And to the obvious question of the weekend, and never a more obvious man to ask than you: Who’s gonna win the bugger?

RW: I don’t know that anybody cares about my view, but I think Penrith have been a magnificent side for four years, and I think they will go on and win the premiership for four years in a row, in what will be their fifth grand final in a row. And while we must never underestimate Melbourne, they’ve suffered a major blow with the loss Nelson Asofa-Solomona. All up, I think Penrith.

Fitz: Will you go out to the game?

RW: No, I’ll watch at home. I’ve got no doubt you see a lot more on television than you do at the ground anyway. The television people have been working on taking us to places we’ve never been before, and that’s what they’ve done, magnificently. I’ll be watching.

Fitz: We wish you well, and we’ll be thinking of you at 7.30 on Sunday evening. “I’ll tell a man” we will be.

News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.