The Bill McLaren Archive
The Heritage Hub is currently assisting the Bill McLaren Foundation by cataloguing the Bill McLaren archive. This important collection contains hundreds of McLaren’s ‘big sheets’ which he compiled to record a wealth of information about rugby teams, players and officials in preparation for commentating on each match. The sheets are accompanied by pages of notes, descriptions of matches, programmes and newspaper cuttings, which all make the archive of enormous interest to rugby fans and a valuable educational resource.
The archive contains big sheets prepared for a large number of important matches from the 1950s to the start of the twenty-first century. For instance, there are numerous big sheets covering the Five Nations Championship, examples include sheets relating to Scotland’s 3 – 3 tie with England at Murrayfield on 15 March 1958 and their 38 – 10 victory against Ireland at Murrayfield on 1 March 1997.
As well as showing McLaren’s meticulous preparation for each match, the big sheets give an insight into some of the problems that could arise when covering a match. For example, the big sheet prepared for the Barbarians v. Argentina match on 17 November 1990 records that McLaren’s glasses broke three minutes before transmission.
For more information about the Bill McLaren archive please e-mail Brian Renwick at brian@billmclarenfoundation.co.uk
Posted by: Angela
