Official statement
I’m not ready to hang up my whistle yet, says Rugby World Cup referee Barnes
‘Reports of my imminent retirement have been exaggerated,” says Wayne Barnes with a chuckle, correcting the notion that England’s most experienced referee and the current World Referee of the Year will be hanging up his whistle at the end of this Covid-lengthened season.
Barnes, 41, has been granted a year’s extension to his contract with the Rugby Football Union that takes him through to the end of next year and, with it, the chance to repeat one of his most cherished assignments: officiating at a midweek match on the Lions tour to South Africa in 2009.
Next year’s tour to the same destination holds tremendous appeal, while a stint at the 2023 World Cup in France has not been ruled out. “No, that is not beyond the realms of possibility,” says the man who was tipped to take charge of the final in Japan seven months ago until England shredded the All Blacks in the semifinals and with it Barnes’s dream gig.
“Which would the English public rather have had – me on show or England in the final?” muses Barnes. “No contest. I was given a heads up that I would probably have got the final but even my ego would not have wanted to deny England.
“I was always due to take stock after the World Cup in Japan. The 2021 Lions is appealing and given that Nigel [Owens] did the 2015 World Cup final at the same age [44] I’ll be in 2023, who knows?”
Barnes does have a high-level career as a barrister to run in tandem with his high-profile officiating. He is a director at Fulcrum Chambers in London, working initially as a criminal barrister before taking on bribery and corruption briefs and, latterly, sport law and governance.
He was the youngest referee to make it on to the national panel, while still at university, and within a few months of getting his first professional contract in 2005, he took charge of a Test.
Within two years, aged 28, he found himself tasked with refereeing New Zealand against France in the 2007 World Cup quarter-final in Cardiff, Les Bleus pulling off a stunning upset in winning 20-18, albeit the clinching score by Yannick Jauzion had a forward pass in the build-up. Barnes felt the ire of the Kiwi nation, with even the prime minister, Helen Clark, contributing to the debate. If only there had been video technology.
“We did have technology in play but not for decisions like that,” Barnes says. “The television match official can rule on build-up incidents now, so I would have seen the error in a few seconds. It was pretty obvious on the replay, wasn’t it? We’d have gone back for a scrum and we wouldn’t still be talking about it.”
And maybe Kiwis would not have felt the need to put Barnes’s face on a urinal in Cowboys bar in New Zealand’s tourist hotspot of Queenstown with the heartfelt inscription: “He p----- us off in 2007. Now p--- on him.’
After 11 years of serving a nation’s need for a whipping boy to cover up their on-field limitations in that quarter-final, Barnes’s face has been replaced by that of Donald Trump. If nothing else, the fallout only emphasised how important technology can be in sport. For all the birth pangs in football, Barnes firmly believes that the sport will come to terms with Var.
“It took rugby a while to iron out the kinks, so let’s cut football some slack,” said Barnes, who has had several talks with his footballing counterparts. “The TMO is about 15 to 16 years old and we are still tweaking it. Var has had half a season. One thing I would like to see is more crowd engagement in the decision-making process, the big-screen replays. That works well in rugby. We all feel part of it. The technology is there to help you get the big decisions right more often than not, and not leaving it to chance.”
Barnes speaks passionately about the sport, one that he began playing as a five-year-old at Bream RFC in the Forest of Dean. Even though he has become a city slicker, his family roots are still there, and he was due to host his annual charity match at Lydney a fortnight ago. He got Eddie Jones to coach his select XV last year, Warren Gatland the year before.
Barnes took up refereeing at 15 after injuring a cruciate ligament. Bream thirds against Berry Hill Whoppers was his first posting. Over the next three years, Barnes racked up 250 games, doing four matches a weekend on occasions. “You certainly learn fast in adult company,” he says.
At the University of East Anglia, where he studied law, he would play midweek and referee at weekends. In his first month on the national panel, he took games in Launceston, Redruth, Plymouth and Penzance. Barnes could offer the railway timetable from Norwich as his specialist subject on Mastermind.
The postponed Six Nations match between France and Ireland would have been his 90th Test. Last year’s was his fourth World Cup. Ask him to name his favourite game, though, and he cites London French against Kilburn Cosmos in November 2015. Barnes had been due to take Racing 92 against Munster in Paris but it had been postponed following the terror attacks at the Bataclan the night before. So he rang the London Society of Referees for an ad hoc appointment.
“It was on Barnes Common and I caught the bus there so that I could have a couple of pints afterwards,” recalls Barnes. “The London French chairman, Jean-pierre, greeted me and asked if we could have a minute’s silence beforehand. The spectators joined us and Kilburn presented a bouquet in the colours of the Tricolor. After 25 minutes or so, I realised that I hadn’t awarded a single penalty. I mentioned that to the players and told them not to screw it up from thereon in. And they didn’t. Not a single penalty in the match. Jean-pierre came on at the final whistle with a glass of Chablis and a French beret for me.
“Whenever retirement from professional rugby does happen, those are the sort of games I still want to be officiating somewhere.”
Still whistling, after all these years.
‘Which would the English public rather have had – me on show or England in the final? No contest’