Eddie Waring: Mr Rugby League

What a big crowd at Wigan.

Until last Sunday the home team hadn't lost a match,

they're rather keen to, of course, break this record.

Eddie Waring is the man who introduced the nation to rugby league.

One ton of rugby, you're looking at there - meat, brawn, muscle, brain, the lot of it.

He gave millions of TV viewers a vision of the North of England.

Oh, what a tackle!

If he's still got his head on, he'll enjoy the match.

Up and under. It's a beauty, up and under.

As the voice of rugby league, he became a symbol of the North,

but in his own heartland, he was both loved and loathed.

There is a conflict between Eddie himself, who feels that he's evangelising the sport,

he's spreading the game, he's helping it to expand,

and the people who are involved in rugby league

in the North of England, who don't see it that way at all.

The more fame Eddie enjoyed, the more he became a controversial and divisive figure,

accused of being a Northern caricature who didn't take rugby league seriously.

To be told that you know nothing about the game,

that you're a lousy commentator, you only say the obvious,

and you're poking fun at everything and taking the mickey out of it, would hurt most people, I think.

He's missed it! He's missed it! He's on the ground, he's missed it. Poor lad.

Eddie's story tells us much about a sport born out of class conflict,

troubled by financial affairs and involved in a struggle for wider recognition.

Eddie Waring was an entrepreneur and sporting pioneer, who took the game to new levels.

In doing so, he entered dangerous territory.

This is his story, about his role in the history of rugby league.

Rugby league is all about pace, power and skill.

It's the North's beautiful game.

For fans, it's the ultimate contact sport, superior to any other.

For the best part of 30 years, the fortunes of the game were closely tied to one man,

an evangelist for the sport, who some say was bigger than the game itself.

He's in with a chance! He'll score if he doesn't drop the ball!

He scores!

In Eddie's heyday, rugby league was watched by millions on TV,

despite only being played professionally in a narrow band of towns in Yorkshire

and the North West of England.

..this stadium really alive!

Many believe the game's popularity is down to its idiosyncratic commentator.

It was completely different to anything that had gone before.

Simple as that.

He has a very strong sense of theatre as well.

Oh! Going for the early bath, as they say.

He got his words jumbled up.

And the score is still 13-4.

Could be more. Uh..less...more.

Somebody said that Eddie commentated like Les Dawson played the piano.

It's just such a remarkable voice.

It's almost like a Vespa motorbike starting up.

And we say in rugby league, what's happening at the hour is when to start the testing

and what he's testing is his running.

Just listen to the commentary.

Nobody will catch this fellow! Nobody will catch him! Nobody will catch him!

A lady wrote to Eddie

after the game and said that his commentary

was just like having an orgasm.

I wouldn't know.

He's gone past two.

He's gone past three, gone past four. And what a brilliant try!

One of the interesting things when you listen to Eddie commentate

is that he actually sounds like a fan at the match.

He's got a bit of the Wembley breeze into him.

He won't stay down very long. He's down again!

He's only a short fellow, he hasn't got very far to fall.

But it all painted a picture, and we all enjoyed it.

Or most of us enjoyed it.

He might take it. It's going to be a sensational finish!

He gets a sensational finish!

The game that Eddie loved was born out of a bitter feud within rugby at the end of the 19th century.

It came at a time of great change, both on and off the field.

In the 1880s, there had been the rise of trade unions.

In the 1890s, there had been the rise of socialism

and of the Labour movement,

the formation of the Independent Labour Party in Yorkshire.

Um, and there was a real sense that the working classes were on the march.

And on the sporting field, in the gentleman's game of rugby union, the southern teams were struggling.

Here they were, with their own game, the game of Tom Brown's Schooldays, and they were being beaten,

often comprehensively, by textile workers, miners and dockers from the North of England.

This was almost tantamount to revolution.

The battle lines had been drawn over payments to players in industrial towns in Yorkshire and Lancashire.

It was a matter of Northern working men working six-day weeks, not being able to go without the money,

so they needed to be compensated for that.

But there was another level to it as well, which was "This is our game.

"Don't you Northern oiks be trying to take it off us.

"We want to stay in control, thank you very much."

From 1895 onwards, there were two sports, amateur rugby union

and professional Northern union, which would later become rugby league.

The two would endure deep suspicion and hostility that would last the best part of a century.

Union saw itself as the national game, but league

soon had a new fan base right across the industrial belt of England.

One player's story epitomised the divisions within rugby.

Manual labourer Dicky Lockwood was union's brightest star, but when the split came, he switched codes.

Eddie was brought up on stories of the teams who'd broken away.

And in the Congregationalist Waring household, in the Yorkshire mill town of Dewsbury,

Dicky Lockwood became a family hero.

Dicky Lockwood was the David Beckham of his era.

Five foot four inches tall,

he'd captained England at rugby union before the split.

And when the split came,

Dicky Lockwood and his colleagues who played for England were written out of the records.

In a rugby-loving household in Dewsbury, such as Eddie Waring's family,

Dicky Lockwood would have been seen as a symbol of,

not just of rugby, but of the ability of ordinary people to stand up for their rights.

Eddie inherited this through his father and his grandfather, these feelings.

And he vowed that one day,

he would show the rugby union people what a wonderful game rugby league was.

And of course, Eddie felt that it was the best game in the world.

Rugby league was not only competing with rugby union, it was in competition with football too.

The rules were changed to open up the game.

Supporters could now see much more of the ball.

And in some Northern towns and cities, it quickly took off.

All matches were played

at 3. 30 on Saturday afternoons. About 2.00,

the doors of the back-to-back houses

would start opening, whatever the weather was like.

And out of these houses,

men would start walking away down the streets. They were long streets.

There were rivers of people coming towards the ground.

It was hard in the North of England.

Hard to earn a living.

Things like sporting contests

were very important to keeping the spirit of the workers going.

Rugby league was also big in Dewsbury, where typewriter salesman Eddie was cutting a dashing figure.

He was regarded as being a bit of a snappy dresser.

When people in Dewsbury wore black and brown and dark blue, Eddie was

wearing cream and white raincoats with yellow scarves.

So he was going about town as the man that could get things done.

He was also showing he understood the power of the media.

Eddie was managing the Dewsbury boys' team, for whom there'd be an exotic name change.

The idea of giving a youth team a nickname or a name like

the Black Knights was pretty revolutionary stuff, really.

What Eddie realised, being the marketing man that he was

and having that sort of head on him, was that it would be easier to whip up

a bit of hype around the concept if he gave it a really obviously recognisable name.

Eddie stopped selling typewriters and started using them instead.

He was now writing about rugby league for the local paper,

and in 1936 he landed his dream job as the manager of Dewsbury Rugby League Club.

There was obviously a conflict of interest, because Eddie was

publicising the benefits of people attending the Dewsbury matches.

And as manager, he was benefiting from the extra income that that would produce.

It wasn't just about rugby league.

For a time, he actually introduced baseball,

which was very much an alien sport in the country at that time and still is now.

He brought Dewsbury to that quite successfully in the short-term.

He also did things like tractor-pulling competitions,

and even Russian Cossack dancing, which is typical Eddie.

Who would have thought of Russian Cossack dancing in Dewsbury?

The outbreak of World War II brought challenges to all sports.

Within days, all events were banned amid fears that packed stadia would be targeted by German bombers.

It meant the touring New Zealand side had no-one to play.

But Eddie, who was serving as a part-time policeman in Dewsbury, spotted an opportunity.

He was driving around one night, listening to the car radio,

and he suddenly hears that this ban has been lifted.

So he thinks "Aha, in that case I'll get the New Zealand tourists here,

"and they can play a game here."

And he does this. He apparently sets around it in one evening.

He's around town, sticking up posters saying "Come to the game.

"Match certain."

He didn't have time to get a band, but he had a trumpeter

to play the National Anthem at the beginning.

He always used to say that it was the only professional

sporting event that took place on that Saturday in 1939.

New rules were introduced during the war to enable clubs to function

whilst their players were serving with the forces.

Teams could call on any player who was stationed in nearby military camps.

Eddie started his own recruitment drive, and persuaded more than 40 internationals to play for him.

Dewsbury now had an all-star team.

They ended up in the 1943 season, Dewsbury, winning every available trophy.

All three of them, the Challenge Cup, the Championship

and the Yorkshire Cup, and playing some pretty good rugby in doing so.

Eddie's name was on everyone's lips.

He was the best-known administrator within the game, but his success came under scrutiny.

In building that great Dewsbury side,

Eddie ruffled a lot of feathers.

He was very aggressive in the way he recruited players,

he avoided following regulations,

he bent the law.

He did a lot of things that maybe he shouldn't have done.

Eddie knew what players wanted.

They played for money.

Although there were regulations stating that a maximum amount could

be paid, it appears that they were able to get extra.

He was a wheeler-dealer.

Things became so bad that at one point, somebody wrote

to the rugby authorities and said,

"Who's running the game, the Rugby Football League or Eddie Waring?!"

By the end of the war, Eddie was in charge of Leeds, a much bigger club than Dewsbury.

But within a year he'd packed his bags, loaded up his typewriter

and set sail for the other side of the world.

The 1946 Great Britain tour to Australia and New Zealand would be a watershed moment for British sport.

It was the first post-war tour, and would shape the fortunes of an eager journalist from Yorkshire too.

The team made the four-week journey on a British navy aircraft carrier, The Indomitable.

And amongst the handful of pressmen with the tour party

was Eddie Waring, who'd paid his own fare to be there.

There's absolutely no question that the experience did prove life-changing to him.

He was already a journalist.

He'd agreed when he went there to do work

for the Yorkshire newspapers, for example, to send them stories back.

But more importantly for him, he'd also agreed to cover the tour for the Sunday pictorial newspaper,

which went on to become the Sunday Mirror.

Australia was a rugby league stronghold,

and this first tour for 10 years meant the players were treated like stars wherever they went.

Rugby league in Australia is egalitarian,

whereas in Yorkshire and Lancashire, it had working-class roots.

His eyes were really open to what the sport

could actually be in terms of glamour, but certainly

in terms of media and in terms of his own future within that media,

both from a written point of view

with the newspapers, but also from a broadcasting point of view.

Eddie was so in tune with the changing face of the media that he filmed much of the '46 tour.

These films would prove useful for Eddie later in his career.

It had been thought they'd been thrown away,

but they've survived, and are being seen by the rugby league historian Tony Collins

for the very first time.

These films are fantastically important for rugby league,

because we get to see some of the great players playing some of the great games of this era.

But I think they're more important than that, because it's

one of the rare opportunities that we have to see sport being played in its social context.

The tour was a great success. Not only did the Great Britain team win the series,

but Eddie saw that the sport had reached all parts of Australian society.

The team met a string of high-ranking Australians,

many of whom had been former rugby league players themselves.

One of the things that Eddie constantly stressed

is this idea that in his words, rugby league was the most democratic game of all.

I think the trip to Australia in 1946 will have confirmed that belief

that given a chance, given an equal opportunity,

it could free itself from exclusivity and snobbery and prejudice.

This is something that could be emulated in Britain.

This is a launch pad.

When Eddie returned to Britain, rugby league was booming.

Attendances were up and club coffers were overflowing.

REPORTER: 'More than 102,000 people set a new world rugby league record when they packed Odsal Stadium

'in Bradford to watch the Challenge Cup final replay between Halifax, in hoop jerseys, and Warrington.'

This crowd in 1954 was a sign for many that the sport had never had it so good.

'Suddenly, he tries a burst through, and a magnificent run sends him

'tumbling over the line to clinch Warrington's victory.'

But there were hints of problems to come, due to forces beyond the game's control.

There was decline in traditional industries - the mines, textiles went into huge decline.

Those staple industries that rugby league had built itself upon

were no longer the dominant industries in Britain.

And a new threat was gathering on the horizon.

'..Capturing the pictures and sounds, the words and music out of the air.'

Television was a new-fangled invention.

Hold it.

On you, camera one.

There was a definite feeling that if you let the television camera into your ground,

you deterred a lot of spectators from attending.

So they didn't like it.

But one rugby league fan couldn't wait for the arrival of television.

Eddie had seen how powerful the media were in Australia.

And in the United States, he'd been shown how popular sport was on TV

by one of Hollywood's biggest stars.

He met Bob Hope in Los Angeles, and went with him

to an American football game that was being televised.

And they were sitting somewhere near the commentary, and Bob Hope said, "Television's the thing.

"It's going to take off." And my father took that on board.

'This evening, the eyes of rugby league fans are on Bradford'.

The BBC had been covering rugby league since the late 1920s.

-Number 14.

-Hunslet.

But some felt that its rank of sports broadcasters,

who were drawn from public and grammar schools,

had little in common with the North and had poor knowledge of the sport.

It was something Eddie hoped to capitalise on.

Eddie had been stressing his capabilities as a broadcaster

to the BBC as early as 1931.

"Dear Sir, I notice there is a possibility in the near future

"of you broadcasting a running commentary on selected games in the North of England.

"In consequence of this, I am taking the liberty of writing to you, wondering if you're interested

"in my qualifications to assist you in the broadcasting on these occasions.

"At present, I am a rugby league football writer for a newspaper in Dewsbury,

"and from an early age, I have been interested in this code.

"I have a good knowledge of the game and am familiar with the majority of players in Yorkshire and Lancashire.

"I remain, yours faithfully, EM Waring."

He was initially turned down,

dismissed as a nuisance.

Then, when he finally did get a chance as a commentator, he was heavily criticised.

They make a number of criticisms about the fact

that he doesn't identify the players, it's very halting and so on and so forth.

Eddie's TV debut hadn't gone well.

Undeterred, he continued to press his case.

"I appreciate your writing to me and the criticisms you make.

"Your comments and experience gained are most important, and I can assure you, they will not be lost.

"I feel comfortable in television, and I also feel that my faults can be eradicated to your satisfaction.

"Sincerely yours, Eddie Waring."

The BBC remained unconvinced,

and Eddie's big chance was slipping away, so he played his trump card.

One of the interesting things is that Eddie provides that link

into the rugby league community that the BBC don't have.

In many ways, the fact that Eddie had these contacts

overcame some of the disadvantages that he had as a commentator.

Eddie's expertise had won the day.

After the best part of 20 years of trying, he'd finally convinced the BBC of his value.

And by the late 1950s, Eddie had cemented his place as the voice of rugby league on the BBC.

From cup finals to internationals,

Eddie and rugby league became a permanent fixture

on Saturday afternoon sports programmes like Sportsview and Grandstand.

Our next reporter is Eddie Waring, for whom the rugby league year ahead

is full of many bright things,

and who addresses us now from his own particular patch.

Did you know there are nine verses in Ilkley Moor Baht 'At?

Rugby league was a mainstay

of Grandstand very often,

particularly in the winter,

when the weather was bad and other outside events were cancelled.

Very rarely was rugby league cancelled. It wasn't just because it was convenient, it was popular.

Soon Eddie's unique commentary style was bringing the game to a whole new national audience.

Oh, and it's a try! A great try by Johnny Raper.

One of the reasons for Eddie's popularity, to this day,

in fact, is that he regarded himself as a guest when being invited by people switching on the televisions.

He felt that he should act in a courteous and polite manner,

as though he was walking through their front door.

He's come back onto the field on our right.

If you can come close, there's a bit of a do here.

There's the players, breaking up after a bit of a squabble.

But what made Eddie different

from the BBC's stable of sports commentators was his distinct Northernness.

Hardisty there without his little mate, Hepworth, the pigeon-fancier.

I don't think we could have dreamt Eddie up, really.

When the referee blew the whistle, he switched himself on.

..Terry O'Grady coming away, and there's an extra man here.

There's an extra man. Boston must score...done it again!

I mean, he had that accent, but it sort of accentuated

when he got into the commentary box.

There was a great try by Sullivan, created by Boston.

It was an accent that I kind of related to,

cos obviously I'm a West Yorkshire lad myself.

But it always seemed like it had been amplified,

like there had been a kind of qualification of its Northernness.

"Well, here we are..."

And it's a kick, and it's a chase to the ball.

Can he get it? It a try! It's a try!

It's not in any way a typical Northern accent. It's just not.

It goes off in all sorts of tangents.

It veers this way and it veers that way.

I loved the remark of a spectator behind me. He said, "Have a go."

I ask you.

Some people are never satisfied in the North of England.

There is an element of, I don't know, putting your Sunday best on.

He's trying to impress. It's a little bit posh. He's trying to be posh.

He's more Harrogate than Dewsbury, really, in that respect.

Eddie soon became much more than a sports commentator.

He was the BBC's rugby league reporter...

Rugby league's a hard game, you know...

..taking him, and the sport's industrial heartland, directly into the nation's living rooms.

It's a grim place, but the people are spirited, and they're very loyal too.

They take their sport very seriously.

In the Featherstone team, there's a milkman, a dustman, a businessman,

six miners and a fish-and-chip shop owner.

People saw rugby league for what it was, an excellent game, very entertaining,

played at some times in very difficult conditions by real men, in places that perhaps they'd never

heard of before, Swinton, Featherstone.

Apologies to Swinton and Featherstone, but you know what I mean.

In 1952, Featherstone were at Wembley.

Their players trained on rabbit pie, and they got £8 a man for losing.

On Saturday, the winners will get £80 a man,

and it'll be champagne and oysters for them.

He had an affinity with the players. You felt that.

There was a kind of "We're all in this together", almost cliquey-ness.

Welcome to Oldham for the first round,

Oldham and Barrow. The players are just coming off the field...

The arrival of BBC Two in the North in 1965

further boosted rugby league's national profile.

For 15 years, Tuesday night would be rugby league night,

though only the second half of the matches were shown live.

Rugby league, and Eddie, were now getting twice the exposure.

The four best teams with the best points average will go into the

semifinal, and then subsequently into the final for the BBC Trophy.

He was able to explain the rules of the game,

which for people, particularly from the south of England who

had never seen a game of rugby league, this was very welcome.

Because he kicked the ball directly into touch,

it was a scrum down at the point that he kicked the ball from.

What we call "ball back".

Eddie was keen to expand the game beyond the North of England.

Rugby league's showcase was the Challenge Cup Final at Wembley.

Many hoped the annual trip to the capital would lead to a great breakthrough.

By going down to Wembley Stadium, playing the final in the same place as the FA Cup Final,

it was hoped that this would give it a national prominence that its

isolation in the North of England had precluded previously.

And he scores! He does.

Wembley became central to rugby league's expansion plans.

And there were emerging markets waiting to be conquered.

In 1965, the chance came for Eddie to sell the game to a

brand new and much larger audience in the United States.

'NBC Sports In Action, with Jim Simpson, brought to you by new Groom and Clean hairdressing.

'Grooms and cleans with every combing'

The American TV network NBC came to Wembley for the final

between Wigan and the Leeds side Hunslet.

They called in Eddie to act as their expert.

Unlike American football, there is no time-out.

Play is continuous, and you do have substitutes,

but only when players are injured.

-We've got a diagram here. Probably, it might help.

-Surely.

It was interesting to see the way the Americans covered the Final, cos it wasn't really patronising.

It contrasted rugby league with other sports in Britain, but it did it in terms of the...

tapestry of British life.

'This spring, NBC Sports In Action has made several visits to Britain.

'Each time, we've come away impressed by the colour and vitality of the British sports public'.

The interesting thing was the contrast that comes out very clearly

between Eddie the rugby league person, and Eddie the commentator.

At half-time, he's asked "What do Hunslet need to do to get back in the game?"

They've got to get an early try if they can.

They've got to get the ball from the scrums, and they've

got to use winger Griffiths far more than what they have done.

-If they do that, they're in with a chance.

-'He knows about the game.'

He knows how it's played. He knows its tactics, its strategies.

It's just something you hardly ever see in the BBC commentaries.

I think it's the toughest team game in the world. They have no protection at all.

This is quite a game, Eddie.

Eddie would have seen it as part of the drive to expand rugby league to America.

But in true Eddie style, he would also have seen it as a way of developing his own ambitions.

Eddie Waring, we're very happy that you were able to be with us today.

Thanks for inviting me, and thanks for coming.

-The American adventure never really took off.

-I'll keep you to that!

But back home, Eddie's career was about to enter the stratosphere.

When Eddie actually becomes a household name,

can't pin it down exactly, but there's a very good chance,

I would contend that it's with the 1968 Challenge Cup final,

the now infamous Water-splash Final, and the Don Fox moment.

It's Leeds against Wakefield, and Don Fox is Trinity's goal-kicking machine.

Gets at it, kicks it,

and he gets two points for it.

But as the game wore on, another factor came into play, the weather.

Well, the holiday season's coming,

so it gets you into practice for the beach.

In truth, it probably shouldn't have been played.

The pitch was waterlogged. It was almost a game of water polo, there was so much water on the pitch.

At the last minute, Wakefield scored a try from their kick-off.

It's a try! It's a try!

It was 11-10 to Leeds.

Don Fox, all he had to do was kick a goal from the front of the post

to win the Cup for Wakefield Trinity.

What a grandstand finish this is.

He's missed it! He missed it! He's on the ground, he's missed it.

And there goes the whistle for time.

Any other commentator at that moment watching Don Fox miss that goal, would have shouted something like

"What an idiot", or something along those lines or "Oh, no, Wakefield have lost", that type of approach.

Eddie didn't do that. He went straight for the humanity of it.

What a dramatic...

Everybody's got their head in their hands,

and he's in tears. He's in tears. He's a poor lad.

Eddie just felt for him, and said so.

There's the poor lad.

It came from the depths of Eddie, didn't it?

What a moment to live with.

I think that really clicked with the nation at large.

I think people would have seen that on the news bulletins.

So for the first time, it wasn't just about the sporting audience, everybody saw it.

In fact, viewers were starting to see a lot more

of Eddie on their TV screens.

Mr Rugby League himself, ladies and gentlemen, Mr Eddie Waring!

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

# By the old mill stream... #

Eddie the TV personality was taking off.

And he was soon to get the perfect vehicle for his growing career.

MUSIC: "It's A Knockout" THEME

It's A Knockout became one of the biggest shows on TV.

Are you ready, girls? HOOTER BLOWS

But for some viewers, there was a blurring between Eddie the rugby league commentator,

and Eddie the entertainer.

You've got your tooter.

Was Eddie laughing with the game, or poking fun at it?

-HOOTER BLASTS

-Off they go!

I wasn't consulted, but I would have been against it if I had been, for the simple reason that

Knockout was a send-up, really.

Well, the last one's all right, because it was in the spout before I blew the hooter, so we count that.

Eddie's commentary on Knockout was remarkably similar to that of rugby league.

Three jesters have to get through the hoop...

And he's in for the early bath.

That made the stick a positive cudgel to beat him with.

And on the terraces, the knockabout nature of It's A Knockout wasn't going down well either.

Never seen anything like this, certainly not this pillow fight...

I think it made us feel that we weren't being taken seriously, that somehow,

rugby league was not as other sports,

and it didn't need to be treated with the same respect.

The equivalent of Eddie Waring would have been Tommy Cooper

covering the All England Tennis Championships.

He was certainly moving in different circles.

A string of sports stars and actors all experienced an audience with Eddie.

He was a cross between a Bradford mill owner and a matinee idol.

THEY LAUGH

I don't think it ever went to his head that he was a famous person, although he did like fame.

There was now a danger that Eddie's public profile

was becoming bigger than the game he was commentating on.

Whilst most viewers were now getting their weekly fix of rugby league and Eddie via Grandstand

and the Floodlit Trophy,

one primetime BBC documentary in 1969 showed the game in a whole new light.

The Game That Got Away was an authored piece about rugby league.

And it touched upon a growing cause of concern - how the game was portrayed on TV.

We've got a big crowd at Wigan and the home team, who until last Saturday, hadn't lost a match,

they're rather keen to, of course, break this Castleford record.

There's two games.

There's the game you see on television and the game you see here.

It can be the same game in the sense that television

can be here and Eddie Waring, who is perhaps the best commentator

can be here. But the thing he's presenting

comes over as a kind of comedy, doesn't it?

Almost as a rival to all-in wrestling, and that isn't the game at all.

The game is a very serious, very tough game.

But it's also, although the players would blush if you said this,

it's a very intelligent game. Almost an intellectual game.

The programme also lifted the lid on the murky world of business and money,

and especially how clubs would tempt players away from union to join the professional code.

I had £4,000 in £5 notes in a brown paper parcel.

-Yes...

-No kidding, this.

It's usually a working-class type of fellow that,

shall I say, takes the bait or makes the right decision.

The only people that we leave alone, seriously, when the people are going to Oxford and Cambridge,

we always say "Well, that's something out of our...there's no chance of getting these boys."

And a certain former rugby boss had also had a go at poaching players.

Oh, it was just a job of work.

I never thought...you know, it's like going and buying a stake in a hotel or something.

I don't look upon it as anything very difficult.

The higher Eddie's profile rose, the more he became a figure of mystery

who operated not from the BBC or from a rugby ground,

but from the Queens Hotel in the centre of Leeds.

He kind of almost established himself as the...

separate headquarters for his coverage of the game.

It was almost like an alternative seat of power.

It was a place for him to strut his stuff and to appear the big man.

If he'd got people there from the Rugby Football League, for example, he would take calls from the BBC.

There was a standing joke that a lot of the time, that was just showbiz.

He'd be talking to somebody from the Rugby League, and a telephone call would come

through and the bellboy would go "Mr Waring, it's David Attenborough from the BBC."

From the Queens, Eddie also helped fix deals for the game's star players.

Sometimes, you'd get a bit... wanting to go to another club.

So Eddie arranged it. Private meeting.

We met at his hotel in Leeds.

We had a chat,

and I think if I'd put my mind to it and really wanted to go,

I should have done, because Leeds was a tremendous club.

And Eddie arranged that for me. That would have been great for me.

And it wasn't just player deals that Eddie was involved in.

He also brought sponsors to the table that would play to a Northern stereotype.

Rugby league needed money, and over the years, a string of brewery and tobacco companies got involved.

This is a match sponsored by John Player No.6.

They were attracted by a target audience, and Eddie Waring.

It's often been said about Eddie that he had a bit of stardust about him

and if you got close to him, who knows, a bit of that stardust might sprinkle off on to you.

There was definitely an element of that with those sorts of sponsors.

But the Queens Hotel played another role.

It kept his public and private lives very separate.

Eddie had married in the early 1930s, but the relationship hadn't lasted.

When that broke down, Eddie met the real love of his life,

which is Mary, with whom he had his son, Tony.

Whilst we, probably, today wouldn't see that as in any way

particularly scandalous,

I think Eddie was always slightly nervous that,

had any of this got out into the public arena, it may have brought an end to his career.

Off the field, Eddie's Mr Fixer reputation was growing.

On tour, he'd sort out problems for players, and back home he'd organise rugby league road shows

where he'd show the films he'd taken of the Great Britain team playing down under.

Eddie's roadshows could fill town halls.

In fact, one town hall, Huddersfield,

he was reluctant to go there because it was a very big town hall, and he felt he couldn't fill it.

But the local Huddersfield chap said,

"There's only two things that can fill Huddersfield Town Hall.

"One is Eddie Waring and the other is the Messiah."

Eddie did the show, and he filled Huddersfield Town Hall.

He got some football people like Bill Shankly, Matt Busby.

All the people you'd never dream of going in the back room of a pub, Eddie got them there.

While Eddie became more of a household name, rugby league's decline continued.

In the early '60s, it became fashionable to be from the North.

Rugby league never became part of that,

partially because I think it was more fashionable to be from the North

than it was to be in the North.

I think the 13-a-side code went through very difficult times.

I would say from about 1965-66 onwards, wages were increasing.

Attendances were dropping because there was more sport on television, so it affected gates.

By 1970,

a member of the Rugby League Council, the game's governing body, was

so much in despair that he said "Rugby league is not dying, it's dead."

Rugby league was enduring its darkest days, but Eddie's star continued to rise.

And it's the winner!

THEY PROTEST

For people in the North of England, rugby league was not just about winning and losing.

It carried so much more resonance in terms of politics, class, in terms of...

real or imagined grievances at the way that society treated them.

This is a funny shape for a football, Eddie.

-It depends how you pull it out and push it in.

-So I've heard.

For Eddie then to come along and start popping up on game shows and

things like that, and appear to be making fun of the game,

really put a lot of people's backs up.

He just loved to tell you about what he was going to be appearing in,

and things he'd be doing with Mike Yarwood.

'Thank you very much, Mr Gascoin,'

Gascoinee, Gas, Mr Gas...Bamber.

My name is Eddie Waring, and I am a rugby league raconteur.

Purists would take the view that... Did he sell out?

Like a lot of people, he saw the opportunities that television

offered up to him.

You might say actually, you'd be daft to turn them down.

CHEERING Thought you were going to trip up.

It was petty jealousy. It was for rugby league, and a lot of people thought it was for his ego.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

These colours of blue and red are Wakefield Trinity in rugby...

You often hear it said that he almost sold his soul in a way.

He basically became not so much an Uncle Eddie as an Uncle Tom for the

BBC, and gave them the image of the North that they wanted to portray.

-How are you all up there, I ask myself, in Yorkshireland?

-Hello, Cilla.

I think Eddie was simply being Eddie. He was an entertainer.

He wanted to entertain people.

Back on the pitch, Eddie's influence was growing.

Rugby league was a winter sport, and cold weather could play havoc with the fixture list.

For Eddie and the TV outside broadcast team, this was a problem that had to be overcome.

So we get there, and maybe the pitch was frozen.

And we say "Why haven't you got any braziers out?"

Because that's the only way you could unfreeze a pitch in those days.

So Eddie and I sometimes physically moved braziers around.

And on one occasion, due to extreme weather, most of Grandstand's sport

was called off, and all eyes were on Eddie.

The frost was ten yards in at least.

The visiting side came and their coach said "No way, I'm not risking my players on that."

Eddie turned to me and said, "Do you know the referee?" I said "Yeah, I know him well."

He said, "Right, we'll go to the end of the car park, and when he comes, sort him."

By that, he meant I told him that Eddie would see him after the game

and it would be in his best interests to make sure the game went ahead.

His career would probably take an upward curve...and...

the game went ahead.

Rugby league's money problems were still an issue, and in 1971 the sport

commissioned management consultants to take a deep look at the game.

Just a few sentences of the Caine Report were devoted to Eddie, but the impact was huge.

The report said the BBC's coverage was harmful to the game,

and that the commentator had little credibility.

Eddie might be entertaining, but the laughter was patronising.

Eddie called a press conference to deny that his commentary was detrimental to the game.

And the BBC came to support him to say what a wonderful chap Eddie was and he wasn't just A commentator,

he was THE commentator,

and anybody who criticised Eddie Waring didn't understand rugby league.

I think the thing that upset sometimes was the feeling of

people saying he didn't know about the game, which was clearly untrue.

I think he tended to take the view that the prophet isn't recognised in his own land.

The press had a field day, but the BBC stood squarely behind their man.

I seem to remember the BBC said, "No Eddie, no contract."

The BBC wouldn't be told by any sport what commentator it could use anyway.

In this instance, there was no question that it would be anyone other than Eddie Waring.

On the terraces, the relationship between Eddie and his employer seemed less than straightforward.

Some supporters felt that in sticking with Eddie,

the BBC was propagating a Northern caricature who relied on humour rather than analysis.

Others saw a pro-union bias at the heart of the corporation.

Absolute nonsense.

We didn't come much rugby union other than the internationals in those days.

There was no pro-rugby union bias.

When there was a big rugby league event such as the Rugby League Cup Final

or a rugby league international,

then rugby league got the same sort of treatment

as a rugby union international would get.

In the aftermath of the Caine Report, Eddie threatened legal action,

and in his Sunday Mirror column, he hit back at his critics.

"Rugby is a very difficult game to understand.

"I could teach 22 Aborigines to play soccer in half an hour.

"I couldn't teach 26 undergraduates how to scrummage in less than half a day.

"My job is twofold - to get as much out of

"each game as I can for the viewers, and to sell the game nationally.

"I think I do both."

The Caine Report did lead to structural changes within the game, but ironically, with the full weight

of the BBC behind him, Eddie's position as the voice and face of rugby league was stronger than ever.

And within months, almost 20 million viewers would see Eddie on his biggest stage yet.

-Fred Astaire.

-And Ginger Rogers.

It's The Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special of 1971,

and Eddie's rubbing shoulders with some of the BBC's big names.

# Lovelier... #

Eddie said to me "When you're booked for the Morecambe and Wise, David, you've arrived".

# ..While there's moonlight and music and love and romance

# Let's face the music and dance... #

LOUD CHEERS

Eddie's raised profile was paying off.

Audience research conducted by the BBC showed he had a new and growing fan base.

He was becoming a cult figure.

-AS EDDIE:

-This lad's a plumber, and we all think he's a grand lad!

He seemed to go down, shall we say, rather better in the South than the North.

There was a strong body of opinion in the North that the sooner

he was bundled out of his commentary position and dispatched to the outer mountains somewhere, the better.

I did have plans to kidnap him just before the Saturday afternoon broadcast,

and releasing him after the match.

I think you imagined that bit.

We scrapped those plans as a step too far.

But patience on the terraces was wearing thin, and fans were demanding action.

In 1976, the BBC received a petition from the 1895 Club, a supporters'

group who took their name from an earlier time of rugby revolution.

They said 11,000 people had signed their petition.

Some had offered their signatures in blood.

They wanted big changes in how the game was portrayed.

He actually got in the way of the game being properly presented.

He personified what the BBC wanted to make of rugby league,

this cloth cap, Northern working-men's,

pigeon-fanciers, whippet races image of the game.

You felt you were being patronised.

Eddie sort of...

embodied a North of England that had probably disappeared by the end

of the Second World War, or was well on the way to disappearing.

This was the 1970s, remember.

The BBC disputed both the size of the protest

and many of the points that were raised.

It said the game's national profile was mainly down to Eddie.

Nevertheless, the damage had been done.

Eddie took that to heart, because it was the real fans of rugby league

that were making these statements.

He felt that for all the years that he had worked for rugby league

and promoted rugby league, that it was undeserved.

A once flamboyant Eddie was now trying not to be noticed.

From that point onwards, he started a slow retreat into his shell.

He starts to feel a bit more threatened by the people around him.

There was one situation at Widnes where we were coming off after a game,

and somebody had waited and was giving us a load of verbal.

And when my father and I said, "Clear off, we don't need this"

and Eddie was perturbed about it, the bloke seemed to lunge.

So me and my father took him down and put him to the ground and called an officer.

This game is going to continue... at a hard pace...

Eddie in 1976 had become...

an exile in his own country.

..In a rather difficult defensive position...

He was no longer part of the rugby league community

which he felt so strongly about 30 years previously.

And you wonder sometimes, as he got towards the end of his career, whether late at night,

he looked in the mirror and saw the Eddie of 1946 looking back at him and asking, "What did you do?

"What did you do?"

And that maybe the Eddie of 1946 would whisper to him,

"You're a poor lad, Eddie. You're a poor lad."

Now in his mid-sixties, Eddie still commentated every week,

but the controversy about the BBC's rugby league coverage continued.

The game endured a new low in 1978, when a dog wouldn't leave the pitch

during a cup tie between Leeds and Halifax. It became national news.

Even Blue Peter picked up the story.

-PETER PURVES:

-The collie dog, which found instant fame when commentator Eddie Waring

gave him just as many mentions as the two-legged players.

Doesn't run until he takes the kick.

And...he's started to run.

He's going to be offside, and he kicks.

The dog spent much of the game on the pitch, in full view of the TV cameras.

Well, I mean, this is where I would plead guilty if I was being accused of sending it up.

I had to send it up, didn't I?

There it is. "K. Nine." Oh, dear.

He's what they call a five-eighths, not a three-quarters.

Eddie was horrified, and said to me at half-time,

was I absolutely sure that this was the right way to do all this, because it was really getting

in the way of the game, and it wasn't doing the game any good.

So I just said "Well, it's there. I can't ignore it.

"So...let's go for it."

Oh, dear.

Eddie and the BBC took the flak, but a much bigger struggle was about to unfold.

And the red, red robins go bob, bob, bobbing along...

By now, TV viewers were used to the obscure nature of some of Eddie's commentaries.

But all wasn't well.

His delivery was becoming more erratic.

What no-one knew was that these were the signs

that Eddie was now fighting the greatest battle of his life.

There were times when...

he wasn't with it, really.

He was struggling to commentate.

The ball has been lost...

But...distraught is the word, I think...

He stops being able to identify players.

This is a break. And a try. Andy...

It was simply a case of "It's a try" or "He's going to score"

or "He's dropped the ball", that sort of thing.

Well, we've got a sub warming up.

Just...

I don't know...

He was having to have stick-on labels

posted on the window in front of him with the names of the players.

People whispering in his ear what things were.

This was more than forgetfulness.

Eddie was struggling with dementia.

With this sort of rugby, the game will never die.

I asked him if he was thinking of retiring from the BBC.

And for the first time in my life,

I saw a different Eddie,

and he turned on me and quite sternly said he would know when to retire.

It was his business and nobody else's, and he didn't want me making those sort of comments.

With Eddie reluctant to go, the big problem for both his family and the BBC

was how to convince him that it was now time to hang up his microphone.

I knew perfectly well that if I was to call Eddie to my office,

I was head of sport at the time, or to go up to see him and say, "Eddie, we feel that the time has

"come when you should give up", he would have been devastated. Absolutely devastated.

So what we did between us was, over a period of a few months,

persuade Eddie that it would be

a good thing for him to come to me, and say that he wanted to resign while he was at the top and give up.

And that's what happened.

Eddie's last cup final came in 1981, and before the game,

he was interviewed by Grandstand's David Coleman.

A hesitant Eddie struggled with some of the questions.

Eddie, I remember as a young reporter,

when I was in the Manchester newsroom, you were working on news

from the North, and you were a very straight reporter in those days.

Yet you changed your style for commentating, and it's been very effective.

-Was this a conscious change of style?

-I don't think so.

I think it would result in somebody saying, "You was so awful tonight"

or "I don't fancy what you did", and then you veer into something I like,

I remember at a match when you were there, you were running and we couldn't see you for dust.

Enjoy it, I hope it's a good last match.

Thanks for the way you've looked after it. Good luck.

Thanks a lot.

Eddie cut quite a sad figure,

which was a shame, because...

what was happening to the game then was what Eddie would have wanted.

It was beginning to change.

It was beginning to regain its old popularity.

It was beginning to become much more modern and forward-looking,

exactly the things that Eddie had campaigned for as a young journalist in the '40s and '50s.

Late in 1981, Eddie received an MBE for services to rugby league.

The dementia had now taken hold, and Eddie's health was deteriorating.

There'd be one last visit to Headingley

to bid farewell to the game that he loved so much.

Just before we went to our seats, Eddie put his

trilby hat on and his camel coat and walked towards the window.

The crowd in the stand to our right all stood up, recognising him,

and started applauding as much as to say, "Welcome back, Eddie."

The applause went round and round like a Mexican wave.

It was a very moving moment. When Eddie turned round, he was in tears.

After spells of being nursed at home,

and just two years after his last commentary,

Eddie was admitted to the High Royds Psychiatric Hospital near Leeds.

Really just...got worse.

In the end,

my father wasn't, didn't speak.

So you can imagine, from a great communicator

to be in that situation was tragic.

To see this marvellous, vibrant man who was such a great personality

reduced to such a state was extremely sad, very sad indeed.

In October 1986, the man who'd brought rugby league to the nation

finally faded away in the psychiatric unit that had become his home.

He was 76.

The years after Eddie's death, saw great changes for the sport that he'd championed.

In 1995, one hundred years since the great rugby split, the feud with union was finally over.

The 15-a-side game had also turned professional.

Despite Eddie's hopes for expansion,

rugby league remained tied to its Northern roots.

But a new revolution brought Super League, summer rugby and new names for some old teams.

There were also millions of pounds from Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB, bringing respite

from the financial troubles which had dogged the game for so long.

The way in which it's adopted the nicknames, it brought in the razzmatazz,

attracted families on the basis of the match-day experience.

That was the type of thing that Eddie was arguing for in the 1940s.

And this demonstrates how far ahead of his time he really was.

He was born 100 years ago.

And still, people...

remember him and put rugby league and Eddie Waring in the same sentence.

It's easy to overlook the entrepreneurial nature of the man

and the fact that he was actually a visionary.

Yes, he was a comical figure and an entertainer, but first and foremost he was a rugby league man

who was both of his time and a rugby league man who was ahead of his time.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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