Early Life
McLaren was born in Hawick, in the Scottish Borders, in 1923 to a knitwear salesman from Loch Lomond-side who had moved down to the area.
As a young boy, he was steeped in local rugby stories:
- "I was brought up on stories of the great Scottish players of the twenties, many of whom I never saw play but knew all about... I used to go with my father to see matches at a very early age, the great Hawick heroes including Willie Welsh, Jock Beattie and Jerry Foster, so I had an all-consuming desire to wear the green jersey of Hawick."
In his teenage years, McLaren grew up to be a useful flank forward. He would later play for Hawick RFC.
He served with the Royal Artillery in Italy during the Second World War, including the Battle of Monte Cassino. He was used as a forward spotter, and on one occasion was confronted by a mound of 1,500 corpses in an Italian churchyard, an unpleasant experience which never left him.
He played in a Scotland trial in 1947 and was on the verge of a full international cap before contracting tuberculosis. The diseases nearly killed him and forced him to give up playing. He spent 19 months in a sanatorium in East Fortune (East Lothian), where he was given an experimental drug, Streptomycin, which saved his life. However, of the five patients given the drug, only two survived. While in the hospital, he began his broadcasting career, by commenting on table tennis games on the hospital radio.
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