Rugby referee Nigel Owens is more used to dealing with fly-halfs than flight schedules, but yesterday he found himself wading, not for the first time, into the hotly-contested public relations scrum between Ryanair and Aer Lingus.

Nigel Owens can talk about it now. Ireland-New Zealand.

Referee Nigel Owens took to twitter to defend his handling of Saturday’s Heineken Cup semi-final between Clermont and Munster.