The news of Les Murray’s passing today at the age of 71 would have hit hard among those of us of a certain vintage. Those of us who grew up watching Channel 0/28, later to be called SBS, who were opened up to a whole new world of football from parts of the world not called England.
László Ürge first came to our screens in 1980 when the new multicultural broadcaster screened the National Soccer League grand final between Sydney City and Heidelberg as one of its first orders of soccer business. The distinguished man with the slight accent and impeccable pronunciation would become a familiar figure on our TV screens (those of us who were able to point their aerial in the right direction during the multicultural station’s early broadcasts).
Of course, we knew him as Les – the guy who went on to introduce World Soccer to our TV screens. I’ll remember seeing a player called Diego Maradona turning out for a club called Boca Juniors via World Soccer in the early 1980s with Les waxing lyrical about how damn good this stocky all-left-foot player was going to be.
Until SBS and the heavy influence of Les, our TV consumption of football was almost entirely British, with shows like The Big Match (Brian Moore), Match of the Day (Jimmy Hill) and Star Soccer (Hugh Johns). That, combined with the annual live telecast of the FA Cup Final, gave football-crazy lads like myself a fairly narrow view of football; muddy pitches, teams like Liverpool, Leeds United and Nottingham Forest, players such as Kevin Keegan, Billy Bremner and Stan Bowles, and managers and personalities like Brian Clough, Don Revie and Bob Paisley.
Les changed all that. As Sports Director at SBS, he set about providing an education in the world game long before the internet, live streaming and pay TV opened up that universe.
Regular exposure to leagues in South America and continental Europe exposed new playing styles, exotic new locations (I still find it hard to fathom that some grounds in South America were surrounded by a moat!) and new names such as Tardelli, Weah, Gullit, Rossi and Goycochea, just to name a few. I can still hear him pronouncing those names as I type.
Of course, Les also pushed the bon mots of the local NSL as SBS stepped in to cover the league after Network Ten stopped covering it. On TV, Les produced, presented and commentated some of the NSL’s most passionate and memorable moments.
He would praise and criticise in equal measure – a truly independent voice in the football landscape, even though his heart belonged to St George Budapest, a club founded by Hungarian migrants which became a powerhouse in the NSL in the mid 1980s with Les’s close friend and future Socceroos coach Frank Arok at the helm.
His long friendship and on-air partnership with Johnny Warren saw them coined ‘Mr and Mrs Soccer’ in a book by current Fox Sports commentator and former St George NSL striker Andy Harper. Together, Les and Johnny were crusaders for the game in this country. Their views were often vociferously and passionately debated and they certainly cracked a lot of eggs to make the footballing omelette.
In 1995, the band This Is Serious Mum immortalised Les in pop folklore with their song “What Nationality is Les Murray?” Les loved the tune and joked with the band about the clues they included in the lyrics, even if those of us who’d been brought up with Les on the box knew full well the answer to the question TISM posed.
In 2002, when Channel Nine had won the rights to broadcast that year’s World Cup from Japan and South Korea, Les and SBS saved football fans from a horrid fate. The Nine Network had bid for and won the rights with the view that Australia’s participation in the event would provide some prime time ratings bonanzas given the rare-for-us friendly time zones the finals were being played in.
When the Socceroos did not qualify, Nine lost interest, declaring they would only televise the semi-finals and the final live. SBS stepped in, negotiated a deal to show all the games live, and their subsequent coverage outrated everything Nine put up against it. Legend has it that a furious Kerry Packer fired his entire sports department when he found out that games featuring Brazil, Germany, Argentina and England doubled the viewership of whatever game show or reality show Nine had programmed against it.
Les dined out on that knowledge – real or folklore – for years.
For a brief time, Les signed my players’ cheques when he was President of St George, and on the few occasions I met him, he was a wonderful, friendly and totally down-to-earth bloke who could talk football over a coffee or something stronger for most of the day.
But my abiding memory is that of November 2005, when Les signed off the broadcast of that memorable World Cup qualifier between Australia and Uruguay by looking heavenward and saying, “Johnny my friend, you told us so.”
I’d like to think they’re swapping a few football stories already. RIP Les.
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