Ray Warren: the voice of rugby league’s retirement leaves a deafening quiet

Ray Warren was the feeling of rugby league as much as its voice. He called the game for so long and felt the game so deeply that it came to speak through him. That warm rumble that ran through Warren’s larynx as he rode the play – a trickle of adrenaline that could build to a torrent in seconds – made fans feel the crunch of tackles, the exhilaration of line-breaks, the desolation of defeat, and the pure joy of tries scored and sports battles won.

After 55 years of broadcasting, 45 grand finals and 99 State of Origins, the “voice of rugby league” has hit the mute button on his career, a week shy of this year’s Origin 1. It’s a characteristically humble call by Warren not to chase a 100th call simply for posterity. Even after five decades, Warren suffered acute anxiety before every broadcast, fearing he would make a mistake in the call and not realise, thereby damaging a legacy hard won and rightly revered. Right to the end he has put the game and its supporters first. But the quiet he leaves behind is deafening.

Of course the game will go on and other commentators will call it as they see it. But no one rode the play like Ray Warren and no one saw the game and its combatants like he did. Colleague Brad Fittler reckons he never heard Warren criticise a player and marvelled at how he always stayed objective rather than subjective. That’s why players are hurting too. Tens of thousands grew up with his voice in their ears, dreaming that one day the great Ray Warren would call their name too. When it came to rugby league, he was the voice of record.

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Of course he lent those larynx to other sports too - racing in all its forms,