On the evenings when I happen to get home from work before my husband, Igor, one of the first things I do – and I wager I’m not the only one – is switch on the TV, which I’ve habitually been doing since I was a kid. Now, it’s not because I want to “bask in television’s warm, glowing warming glow,” but because the apartment otherwise ends up being too quiet and, well, a tad eerie. There’s an inherent vulnerability to silence at night and I suppose that’s still the child in me reaching for the remote to break through that fragility and, perhaps, fear of the dark.
The TV is on and you do things away from the screen while your aural companions suffuse the space. Sometimes your ears perk up at familiar things, voices, songs, so you round the corner to pay some attention.
And there are some voices you just know.
Most of us recognised Les Murray’s magnificent voice right off the bat. The warmth and timbre of it was, at least for me, unparalleled in the Australian media landscape.
Les passed away on July 31. Upon finding out, I audibly muttered “Oh, nooo…” and felt the telltale pinprick of tears. I was fond of Les for quite a while; 23 years, in fact. I emigrated to Australia in July 1994, the time of the World Cup in the US, but I virtually slept through that WC on account of, you know, settling in, grappling with the vernacular and myriad colloquialisms…and being nine. My mum, brother and I watched SBS quite often; it was beloved in our home. “The world is an amazing place” SBS promo with “Sweet Lullaby” from Deep Forest – always gave me the warm fuzzies but, more importantly, made me feel small in the very best way. Hopeful, too. And it wasn’t long before we discovered Les as a staple of the network. He was charming, knowledgeable and exuded warmth. It was just a bonus that he was Hungarian – his proximity to my home country of Croatia and my incidental knowledge of many things Hungarian (given the Hungarian populations across the former Yugoslavia) made me feel as though we were in cahoots, somehow. He looked like the people I used to see in town in the old country. Here was a fellow refugee from a country bordering mine and a football fanatic – it was like, what’s not to love?
When you’re a migrant ambling about and feeling around in the dark, waving your arms out apprehensively in front of you with stop-start, tentative steps, you invariably look for little trails and pegs of familiarity. There are things that catch you – how that one residential apartment building in North Melbourne looks uncannily like a little slice of Yugoslavia, how the kids playing soccer out on the school oval look like you and your friends once did in the dusky summer evenings, how the sea in Williamstown sometimes resembles the azure Adriatic. Les was unwittingly that trail(blazer) for me, a reassuring night light in the wall socket, and an almost subliminal guide towards becoming ensconced in this sunburnt country. His program made sense; he made sense.
I think back to watching Les in my first five years in Australia and having that reference point of the proverbial migrant boy made good. Here was a reassuring symbol of how things will eventually work out, even after the trappings of post-war limbo.
Les helped make things a little less dazed, a little more like home. He made me feel part of. He was never just ‘some guy’ on TV that made me shrug my shoulders or roll my eyes heavenward. Les’s presence could be felt even with the limitations of a televisual broadcast and that’s testament to who he was. And, I mean, when you think about it, he was a little bit like that favourite uncle we all wanna sit next to at family gatherings, a father figure type, that neighbour back in Yugo who’d affectionately ruffle your hair, tell you to relay to the family to come over for goulash later, and ask what Dad thought of that insane Red Star/Hajduk football match from the night before. Les was the human equivalent of a fluffy blanket – a blanket that, quite frankly, was pretty damn comforting in those initial years of immigration when you sometimes tended to feel like you were fumbling even while you were very much succeeding (or, ahem, ‘assimilating’).
And even when Australia and Melbourne began to feel like home, Les and his dulcet commentary was always there to remind where you came from, how far you’d come (literally and figuratively), and that nothing compared to the delicious, exquisite agony and thrill of football, something that – as a Balkanite – was always in my blood. Les’s resolve when it came to promoting football was unsurpassed. He worked tirelessly to propel football into the Aussie mainstream. But let’s not forget how he passionately advocated for refugees, too, particularly in recent years when it has mattered most.
I didn’t follow the NSL during the 90s but we often had Les on in the background while preparing a family lunch or hanging out in the living room. My interest in the World Cup was quite high in 1998 purely by virtue of it being the World Cup (and like any other 13-year-old with a pulse I sang “The Cup of Life” with reckless abandon and imitated Ricky’s hip swaying), but my interest skyrocketed in 2002 due in part to the advent of my former crush, Michael Ballack, and the hormones that come with being 17. With every World Cup, Les was always there and I always felt a little more at ease hearing his commentary from 1998 until 2014 in Brazil. His voice had become home.
And when Australia sublimely qualified for the storied 2006 “Golden Generation” World Cup in their November 2005 qualifier against Uruguay, I still remember Les saying, “Johnny Warren told us so. ‘I told you so, I told you so.’ And there it is: he has been proven right tonight. [looking up] Johnny, we hear you.”
There are so few public figures who could trigger a lump in my throat, but Les made my eyes well up on the tram home when news broke of his untimely passing. I’ll miss his humble expertise, his wit, the way he made Australia fall in love with football, but most especially I’ll miss how his kind baritone warmed countless homes on Sunday afternoons. Farewell, László, the inimitable and wonderful Mr Football. Godspeed to you, and thank you.
