My tribute to Warren Saunders - John Rogers

John Rogers | March 06, 2023

Some of you know I wrote a book about my time playing at St George Cricket Club with Warren Saunders and called it “Mr St George”. Warren’s funeral is next Thursday, where over a thousand people are expected.

That’s a lof people for an 88-year-old, who has out-lived most of his contemporaries - and it poses the question: “Why so many?”

The answer is that somehow people who met him were proud to say: “I know Warren Saunders and count him as a friend.”

How did that happen?

Perhaps the main reason was that he "lit up" every conversation and meeting he had. He did that by showing interest in the other person, by listening, and by responding in a way that engaged people and told them he valued them. In the process he projected an image of high standards, while at the same time as being the type of down-to-earth Australian "man’s man”, that is somehow in our psyche.

Whenever I left him or finished talking on the phone, somehow, I felt uplifted, in a ‘better place”, and even a bit determined to be a better person! Often it was because he would have told a story, or an anecdote - and he had thousands of them that were amusing. And eventually I realised that he followed the "30 second" rule - never talk for longer than 30 seconds, as that’s the length of the other person’s attention span, who will be hanging out by then to give a rejoinder.

It would be easy to undervalue how good a businessman he was, having started work as a “sports star’ selling cars and then at 23 starting a business in the same field as his father’s occupation - insurance. In no way did he simply falling on his feet, it was hard work for many years with his wife Clare simply trying to make ends meet. Nor did he get to high places simply by his “people" skills. On quite a few occasions our conversations drifted away from cricket into the world of big business and government, and he would make an observation that would cut right through the blarney of the common perception to the very heart of the manner, in the same way I’d seen other top-level people do, and was quite beyond my capabilities. It showed him to have the best trait of all: high-level, absolute common sense.

And add to that, he was a terrific entertainer, could sing and tell stories to audiences with flair yet modesty. And he loved a beer, but I never saw him under the weather. As he’d raise a glass of beer he would often say: “how good is this! I don’t know how they do it for the price!” It didn’t matter whether a superstar like Richie Benaud, or the 6th grade trundler down the road, he treated everyone exactly the same.

All of which explains why he was such a remarkable cricket captain and why opposition players so looked forward to playing the St George teams he captained for 14 years. “Like playing first-class cricket,” opposition players would say. In the seven years I played with him, it was clear the whole club admired him, and very few ever left to look for a better opportunity with another club.

In a way he was a great “enabler” - ‘empowerer' even - in that he inspired people to perform better and live their lives better. That applied both on the the cricket field, and especially off it. His skills covered so many fields and types of people, that if Australia had ever become a republic in his lifetime, I reckon he would have been the perfect person to have been Australia’s first President. And I have known people in Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth too, who would have supported that statement to the hilt.

RIP, Wack.