Legendary rugby league commentator Ray Warren’s “barometer” for volume and excitement during a call is the crowd.

Images: Channel Nine
Do you do anything differently when preparing for an Origin match?
I probably do a bit more research for an Origin match than an NRL one, but there’s no such thing as preparation, really. I like to think I’m the play-by-play commentator. I don’t believe that with my role, when I’m surrounded by people like Sterling, Gould, Lewis, Vautin, Fittler and Johns, that people are interested too much in what my opinion is. So I concentrate on just getting my own role as good as I can make it.
We couldn’t imagine you doing anything else than calling the footy and swimming. How did it all begin?
I come from a little place called Junee in NSW. I’ve known I wanted to be a sports commentator since I was eight years old. I used to roll marbles down a slope and call them as horses and try to impersonate the famous race-caller Ken Howard. That eventually led to me sitting in gum trees or on top of the grandstand roof calling the local cricket, or standing in the main street in 1956 looking at a TV and calling the sport to myself with people thinking I was stark-raving mad. There was nobody within a bull’s roar who even remotely resembled a sports commentator for me to go to. I just taught myself.
Somebody once said to me: “There’s a couple of things you have to remember when calling sport: light and shade.
I remember them emphasising that you must listen to the crowd; they’ll tell you when to be light – excited. If they’re quiet, that’s your shade. I find the crowd is my barometer.
– James Smith
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