No doubt he is very knowledgeable about the game. He was always very keen on telling us which amateur club any given player started out with. But he was a crap commentator - just because some of us grew up with the televised game soundtracked by him doesn't mean he was any good.
"Well, well, well, Keith Elwell" my personal favourite meaningless Frenchism.

More like he probably said...."oooooh now then! now has he scored? has he got that ball down? I think he has you know Jonathan!"

I’m sorry but two wrongs don’t make a right, I readily except he knows far more about the game than I ever will, and I also think in everyday life he may be a thoroughly nice bloke, nonetheless I think he was not a very good commentator on radio, or TV. I have believed that the only reason the Dark-side loving school ties at the BBC kept him on was just to maintain the image of the flat cap provincial sport the RU Dark-side want to promote for our game. As a player I can’t comment, I’m not old enough to have seen him in the flesh, as a teacher also I can’t speak, but as a commentator IMO he was very poor.

And he was almost always wrong!

But ,at least Ray French & Eddie Waring did try & lighten the mood which i'm sure is what the terrible twosome of Eddie & Stevo try & do in their own way . Now to talk about bad commentators just look at most of the tv football bods, to say they are boring is an understatement ....football lost its best commentators years ago with Wolstenholme, Coleman, Davies & Moore.

What we have to bear in mind with Frenchy is that he knows what he's talking about because he's been there, done it & got the T shirt.

Everytime someone quotes him I read it in a RF accent!

Good post !!!!!!!
Total t***pot
Good riddance a total embarrassment to our sport.
A BBC rah -rah Patsy intended to portray the cloth cap image of our game.
How anyone can think anything good about this bloke amazes me !!!!!!!!!

You've obviously never met Ray French. Tremendous knowledge of the game and a very intelligent man. You obviously weren't one of his English students.

In his interview at half time in the WC Final he said that only the International game can take our sport forward and club rugby can only take us so far.
Very true and I've always found his comments and anaysis spot on.
He will continue to be on BBC Merseyside's Try Time show, Thursdays 6-7pm and his views on the game are always forward thinking and worth listening to.

I enjoyed him as a child watching rugby on tv but I outgrew his commentary and preferred sky when they took over, I always hoped for someone to freshen things up, I'm sure he's a throughly decent bloke and he certainly knows more than I ever will but I'm glad he's gone.
Now we have Dave Woods and I enjoy him more than most now, would love Vossy though.

Please keep Davies on the union though, god he miserable.

Just hope now that Ray has left the building, Davies is close behind him. Both incredible individuals and nice blokes, but I feel they have held back the BBC coverage for the last decade. Hopefully now, we can press on and get some dynamic commentary that the Challenge Cup deserves.