The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
Top rugby referee Nigel Owens talks to Martin Fletcher
Hailed as the best rugby referee in the world, Nigel Owens was also the first man in this macho sport to declare his homosexuality. Fresh from what is probably his last ever World Cup, Owens tells Martin Fletcher about his future plans: herding beef cows instead of beefy men, and possible marriage to his partner, Barrie. Portrait by Jeremy Murch
Nigel Owens lives in a spacious modern bungalow at the end of a rough track in the former mining village of Pontyberem, just a couple of miles from where he was born and raised in the valleys of south Wales. You can tell his house by the handsome black Mercedes parked outside. Its number plate is NI6 REF.
The world’s most famous rugby referee greets me shirtless, having just got out of the shower. There is kit on the floor, washing on the line and a case lying open on a bed. He and his partner, Barrie Jonesdavies, 27, returned from the World Cup in Japan only the night before. He is a little jetlagged, but still elated.
‘It was a brilliant World Cup,’ he says – brilliant for its scintillating rugby, brilliant for Japan’s effusive hospitality and, though he does not say this himself, brilliant for him.
Aged 48, and in his fourth and presumably final World Cup, he was given the ‘huge honour’ of refereeing the opening game between the host nation and Russia, plus five other matches including England’s pulsating semi-final against New Zealand. He performed so well that he might have been awarded his second successive World Cup final had he not pulled a calf muscle in the semi.
But as we chat in his sunroom it becomes clear that Owens’ calm and authoritative manner on the pitch during that two-month tournament was somewhat deceptive.
He injured his leg while refereeing a match in Cardiff two weeks before it began and only just recovered in time for that opening game. He suffered bouts of bulimia before and during the tournament, probably induced by stress. He had to watch his beloved Wales play France on his mobile phone in a Tokyo hospital while being treated for another illness that has afflicted him for many years – ulcerative colitis. ‘I was just passing blood every time I went to the toilet. I’d never passed so much blood before,’ he says.
And then there was the semi-final, for which he prepared with all his usual superstitions: donning his lucky Superman boxer shorts, listening to How Great Thou Art on his ipod in the changing room, looking skyward and remembering his late mother during the national anthems.
Twenty-eight minutes into the game he felt his calf go. He had it strapped up at halftime but ‘it gradually got worse as the game went on’. He could no longer run at full tilt. ‘I was thinking to myself, “Dig in here, because if this is my last World Cup there’s no way I’m going to go off.”’ He survived, he says, only because he knew from experience where best to position himself, and because both teams were playing such clean rugby that he did not need to be right next to the action.
After what he calls ‘one of the greatest World Cup matches’, he walked off to plaudits from both teams. ‘Every single player came up to shake my hand, and pretty much every one said, “Thanks, Nigel. Great game.” That’s when you know you’ve done a good job,’ he says. The official assessment of his performance was excellent. A week later, at the final, Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, stopped in a corridor to congratulate him.
Owens and France’s equally worthy Jérôme Garcès were the two referees in contention for that final, but Owens had to withdraw because of his injury. He thus lost the chance of becoming the first referee to take charge of two consecutive World Cup finals. But that scarcely detracts from an extraordinary career – a career so nearly curtailed by tragedy.
Owens was born on a council estate in the village of Mynyddcerrig, a quarryman’s only child. He left school after failing his GCSES – ‘the only thing I passed were the school gates’ – but not before an exasperated teacher urged him to try refereeing when he missed a crucial conversion for the rugby team. One of his first matches in charge ended with a team of policemen walking off the pitch, accusing him of bias. ‘I was distraught. I thought, “I’m going to give this up,”’ he says.
He didn’t. A decade later, in 1996, he suf
‘Another 20 minutes and it would have been too late to save me’
fered a much more serious crisis. By then he was bulimic, hooked on bodybuilding steroids and secretly gay. He slipped out of his parents’ house in the small hours of an April morning, climbed a mountain, and took an overdose of paracetamol, washed down with whisky. He was spotted by a police helicopter later that morning and airlifted to hospital in the nick of time. ‘Another 20 minutes and it would have been too late to save me,’ he says.
For 11 more years he carried on ‘living a lie’ – secretly visiting gay nightclubs, having encounters with men that left him feeling guilty and ashamed, even asking his doctor about chemical castration. Only refereeing kept him going. ‘When I was on that field for 80 minutes I was me and nothing else mattered,’ he says.
Finally, in 2007, he found the courage to come out, though he believed it would end his refereeing career. ‘Reffing the World Cup final – and the scrutiny and pressure were massive – was nothing compared to the challenge of accepting my sexuality and taking that step of coming out,’ he says.
His fears were groundless. The rugby world embraced him. ‘It was like the weight of the world lifted off my shoulders,’ he says, and after that his refereeing really took off.
He has now refereed a record 97 international matches on every continent, and countless finals. His home is filled with caps, medals, trophies, shirts and signed photos commemorating nearly two decades at the top of his profession – the latest addition being a rugby ball inscribed, ‘Best wishes, Nige,’ from Owen Farrell and Kieran Read, the England and New Zealand captains. He is rugby’s first celebrity referee, better known than most of the players he referees.
He is recognised all over the world. He has 374,000 Twitter followers. His quips during matches go viral. ‘I’m straighter than that one,’ he remarked after a crooked throw-in. ‘I don’t think we’ve met before, but I’m the referee,’ he admonished one errant player. ‘This is not soccer!’
He is respected for his ability to keep games flowing and his refusal to shirk tough decisions. In 2013, he denied Ireland an historic first victory over the All Blacks by allowing a missed conversion to be retaken in the final seconds because an Irish player had charged too early. In 2015, before 80,000 roaring fans at Twickenham, he denied England the Six Nations title by penalising their scrum as it crossed the try line in the game’s final moments. In last month’s World Cup semi-final, he disallowed (rightly) two England tries.
But Owens has also earned respect for using his celebrity to combat homophobia and help countless young people struggling to come to terms with their sexuality. That was why he took issue with Israel Folau last year when the Australian rugby star declared on social media that homosexuals faced ‘hell... unless they repent their sins and turn to God’.
‘I defend anybody’s right to free speech as long as it doesn’t cross the line into hatred. That did,’ Owens says. ‘I know what it’s like to live with that fear, day in, day out, thinking something’s wrong with you, thinking, “I’m not supposed to be like this. People like me go to hell.” To hear people like [Folau] saying things like that – what it would have done to me when I was struggling with my sexuality, God knows... It ruins lives.’
Owens says Rugby Australia was absolutely right to terminate Folau’s contract after he refused to back down. Had it not done so he might have found himself refereeing Folau in Japan. ‘I would have carried on regardless and shaken his hand afterwards, but I would love to sit down and have this conversation with him,’ he tells me.
In the 12 years since Owens came out, just two gay male professional rugby players,
‘The proudest thing would be that I helped show rugby to be an inclusive sport’
Gareth Thomas and Sam Stanley, have followed his lead. He knows of others who have not. Owens blames their reluctance not on rugby, but on a lingering homophobia in society in general. He has proved that rugby is not homophobic, he says. ‘The proudest thing about my legacy would be that I helped show rugby to be an inclusive sport. There’s always been a place in rugby for all shapes and sizes, but there’s also a place in rugby for whatever sexuality as well.’
Tomorrow, Owens will take charge of his first match since the World Cup. Instead of refereeing England against New Zealand before a deafening crowd of 72,000 in Yokohama, he will appear before a couple of thousand hardy supporters watching Newport versus Pontypridd. ‘I’ll take it every bit as seriously, and enjoy it every bit as much,’ he insists.
He hopes to referee in next spring’s Six Nations tournament, and admits he would like to reach 100 test caps before stepping down, but the widespread assumption within rugby is that he has officiated at his last World Cup. Indeed, he has already begun preparing for life after his present high-profile, globe-trotting, adrenalin-fuelled job comes to an end. ‘I’m not looking forward to it and it will be hugely difficult because I’ve done this week in week out for 33 years. It’s been my life,’ he says.
One of his projects will involve herding beef cows instead of beefy men. As we walk down to Pontyberem rugby club’s pitch below his home to take photos, he points out three fields that he has recently purchased, and a couple of newly built sheds. He is buying another 75 acres near the village, and is about to take delivery of four Hereford pedigree heffers and a bull. Over time he hopes to build up a herd of about 50 cattle.
He worked on a farm as a young boy, he explains. ‘I’ve always had a love of the countryside and farming... I’ll do most of the work myself. I don’t intend to be a gentleman farmer.’
He is drawn back to Pontyberem by ‘family and friends and the way of life, that sense of community, and the Welshness of it all. Welsh is my first language,’ he adds. His widowed father is now 84 and ‘with all the travelling I’ve been doing over the years I just want to be home’.
He has been asked about doing Strictly – ‘It’s been mentioned but I have two left feet. I can’t see myself lasting long if I did,’ he laughs. He will coach referees, do television work and write a second autobiography (the first, published in 2009, was entitled Half
Time). An accomplished public speaker and erstwhile stand-up comic, he will continue to help charitable causes, including Wooden Spoon, one of the three charities supported by The Telegraph this year. He has amassed countless referee’s shirts during his long career, which will each fetch hundreds of pounds in charity auctions.
He might even marry Barrie, a primary-schoolteacher whom he met a few years ago through Facebook, and have children. ‘Now that all the travelling is coming to an end, it is something I would think about and consider in a conversation with my partner as the next couple of years go by – and we’ll see where we’re at and how we settle in on the farm and all that,’ he says.
He says he is happy now, though ‘it’s taken a long time to come’. But he is sad that he has not had children, and not yet given his father any grandchildren to enjoy in his old age. He acknowledges that life would have been much simpler had he been straight. ‘I wish I had kids and was in a normal family environment,’ he says, ‘but that may happen in the future.’
For all his protestations, however, I remain doubtful when Owens talks of retirement and settling down in the valleys – not least because I remember him solemnly assuring me, in a previous interview, that the 2015 World Cup would be his last.
He is now the oldest referee on the international circuit, but he is still in his prime. He still passes the requisite fitness tests. He still enjoys refereeing despite the immense pressures of the modern job – huge television audiences, video replays on big screens, live microphones and the risk of instant vilification on social media if he makes a mistake.
Would he categorically rule out a record-breaking fifth World Cup in France in 2023, I ask? A long pause ensues. ‘Yes, realistically I think so,’ he eventually replies. He would not want to go on past his prime, he adds, but he then proceeds to leave the door wide open. ‘They say “never say never”,’ he says. ‘What if I’m still performing like this in four years’ time? If I’m still at the top, why would you not want the top referee reffing?’
Warming to the subject, he says he feels he is being ‘hurried’ into making a decision now that Japan is over. If that is so, it is likely to stiffen the resolve of this proud, complex man. ‘That was one of my biggest motivations for this World Cup,’ he says. ‘Some people were doubting that I’d be one of the top referees. People were saying, “He’s past his best. He’s not good enough to referee internationals any more. No, he won’t be good enough to referee the knockout rounds of the World Cup.”
‘I thought to myself, “I’m going to show you that I am good enough... I will prove that when I’m at my best I am the best.”’
‘Never say never… If I’m still at the top, why would you not want the top referee?’