Ray French: Remembering a late dual rugby code icon on and off the pitch

Nine years later, Jonathan Davies outstripped Australia’s rapid-quick Brett Mullins to score a brilliant try – again on Wembley’s grand stage.

“He’s got the head back! The Welshman is in for a magnificent try.”

One of the most memorable Great Britain tries, called perfectly.

Perhaps the greatest moment was his call of Martin Offiah’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’ heroics.

Offiah was goosed having touched down, barely able to acknowledge his feat as he sank to his knees with emotion. French had the words.

“That must rank among the finest ever seen on this ground.”

Captured to perfection.

Like all commentators, he had his pet lines. “He’s going for the line!” being a famous one, and his penchant for the combo of a player’s weight and amateur club was another little idiosyncrasy that fans grew to love.

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.