Child refugee Les Muray opened Australian eyes to world game

Les Murray has died with his greatest goal — to bring the beautiful game into our living rooms.

Les Murray, who died yesterday aged 71.

Gyula. That was his name. There were times when Australia’s “Mr Football” Les Murray would reflect on 35 rich and fulfilling years building and broadcasting his treasured “world game” in his beloved adopted country and that name would shoot into his brain like a John Aloisi penalty shot.

Gyula, Hungarian for Julius, the young man who risked his life to smuggle his family across the Austro-Hungarian border during the anti-Soviet Hungarian Uprising of 1956. Mr Football was named Laszlo Urge then. On a cold night near an Austrian village, Gyula farewelled 11-year-old Laszlo then disappeared into the darkness from where he came, leaving the boy free to follow his football-mad dreams in a land 14,000km south where the locals mostly kicked the hide out of footballs that were oval-shaped.

Les Murray with football legend Pele in Adelaide in 1988.

The great Les Murray passed away from a long illness yesterday, aged 71, with his greatest goal — to bring the beautiful game into our prime-time living rooms — comfortably slotted in the corner of Australian sporting history.

There were tributes from across the country and the world, as sports legends and lovers alike celebrated the SBS broadcaster who, along with former on-air partner Johnny Warren, was considered soccer’s greatest champion in Australia.

“Farewell Les Murray,” said Malcolm Turnbull. “The Socceroos and the Matildas never had a more devoted fan than you.”

Socceroo great Tim Cahill said: “A pioneer and legend of our game. No words can describe how much we will miss him.”

His long-time SBS football colleague Craig Foster said the world had lost a “football colossus”. “He fought well into extra time but the whistle has blown,” said Foster, who worked alongside Murray through some of the eight World Cups he covered.

“From humble refugee origins, he became one of Australia’s most recognised and loved sporting identities,” said SBS managing director Michael Ebeid.

Murray covering the 1994 World Cup for SBS.

Murray’s boyhood dream was to play professionally. “The fact that I didn’t because I was too slow, too easily intimidated by muscle-clad, ball-breaking midfielders, too distracted by women and rock ’n’ roll, or just a crap player needs not be a matter of great relevance here,” he wrote with typical clarity in 2011.

Upon arrival in Australia in 1957, Murray spent three weeks in Bonegilla migrant camp in northeast Victoria, before squeezing into a single share-house bedroom in Wollongong with his parents and two brothers. “As a refugee who came here with nothing, I am very grateful to this country for the opportunities I have had,” he said in 2008. “Refugees, perhaps more than other immigrants, are more likely to make a positive contribution to their new country, driven by a need to give something in return for being given a chance to start again after a terrible experience.”

The passion and commitment of Les Murray — not to mention the bravery of that young man he only knew as Gyula — can be seen today in packed A-League stadiums across our cities and in all those round balls being kicked by kids across our suburbs.