‘Over-using technology not good for game’

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

The agony of the home support. The ruthless commitment of the visitors. The atmosphere.

Trouble is, the referee doesn’t remember a whole lot about it.

“Your concentration is everything at that level. I’ve been involved in two of the best games at international level in years, South Africa-New Zealand last year and Ireland-New Zealand.

“People said immediately afterwards, ‘what a great game’, but I wasn’t conscious of that until I got home and watched the video.

“If you’re concentrating, sometimes you have to look up at the scoreboard to get the score, for instance, but you’re usually saying to yourself, ‘the score’s getting close, keep concentrating, every call is crucial here’. It’s like driving up the motorway — take your eye off the road and it’s bang, the same refereeing at the top level.”

And bang was how it finished for Ireland last November in the Aviva, of course.

“I wasn’t conscious of how quiet it was until I blew the final whistle. It was just shell-shock, I think. The only time I noticed the atmosphere, which people were telling me was the best they’d experienced at the Aviva, was coming off at half-time.

“You could hear the crowd and see them rise to the players. I thought, ‘haven’t seen this here before’, though obviously I was conscious there was plenty of noise.”

Owens’s life as a professional referee is busy enough. Take a look.

“Refereeing games in South Africa, you tend to travel to get there the Tuesday before a Saturday game because there aren’t major time difference issues; if I’m going to Australia or New Zealand I’ll try to get there on the Monday before the weekend the game is on in order to recover, though if you’re running touch you can go out maybe Tuesday or Wednesday.

“In the Six Nations you travel the day before the game, usually, and arrive morning or midday, because you need to be available to coaches from lunchtime on the day of the game, whether it’s a specific question on how you’re going to handle a particular aspect of the game or a general query.

“The night before the game you tend to go out for dinner with the other officials, or the home union will bring you out. If the kick-off is late in the evening I’d often take a wander around the city, have a coffee.

“We have a meeting of the officials on the day but generally I chill out. I don’t really focus on the game until I get to the stadium, usually about an hour and a half before the game. I’ll put on the Ipod to get the blood going, a mixture of what’s in the charts and a few Welsh songs. Last, the Welsh hymn Mor Fawr wyt ti. Always.

“Afterwards, if the assessor is at the game you have a debrief with him after you’ve had your shower or while you’re having your food. Sometimes in an international he won’t be there, so when you get home the next day you watch the game and do a self-review which you fill in online — what you did right, what you did wrong, your reasons for doing what you did and so on.

“The assessor sends you a list, then — non-decisions where you should have awarded a penalty but didn’t, errors you made — a penalty you didn’t give or a knock-on you didn’t see, while then there are also comments sought: he might ask, for instance, do you think this guy’s off his feet and your reply can range from, ‘yes, I see your point’ to ‘maybe, but I felt it didn’t affect the game so we went on’. After that he’ll give an overall report based on various outings, tackle area, phases and so on.”

He’s A regular user of Twitter — @Nigelrefowens, with over 68,000 followers — and says he uses the social network “for the same reasons as everybody else”.

“I travel a lot — I was in Australia and New Zealand in 2012 for five weeks, three of those on my own, so I’m trying to stay in touch the same as anybody. I didn’t take up Twitter for a reason relating specifically to refereeing. Certainly there are people who are ignorant of the laws and so forth, while I’m involved with a couple of charities so I like to give them publicity and so on.

“There are people who go on to give abuse — when Wales went through a bad patch a few of the players shut down their Twitter accounts because they couldn’t handle that. But as a referee, if you couldn’t cope with abuse you couldn’t do the job. For me if someone’s abusing me it’s not nice, but it doesn’t faze me. If someone’s bantering with you that’s fine, but if someone’s being personal I’ll block them.”

You might have expected some negativity in reactions to Owens’s candour about his sexuality, but he says the media kerfuffle when he came out a couple of years ago has “settled down” considerably.

“The negatives could be counted on one hand, certainly — it’s only when something happens like Tom Daley coming out, then I have a few busy days with interviews and so on because the media take it up again. Sportspeople coming out will always be news until we reach the time when the first professional footballer comes out, and when we find out who that is. That’s what the world is waiting for, to see the reaction. Until that time I think every sports star who comes out is going to make news, but once a footballer does it then that’ll be it.

“I understand why it’s news. I don’t like using the word normal but the normal thing in life is that people are brought up, have a girlfriend or wife and have kids. If it didn’t happen like that the world would end!

“But I think sport and society need to accept not everyone is like that — that there are people who are different, which doesn’t make us ‘not normal’. But that’s why Tom Daley was such big news, and why other sportspeople will continue to be news — until a footballer comes out.”

Owens is equally articulate about his Welshness: he often tweets in the Welsh language and believes strongly in supporting it: “It’s very important to me. You have a very strong sense of identity here in Ireland, as do many countries, but the one little thing missing is more use of your own language. Imagine how much more enriched you’d be if you had more use of your own language.

“The hymn I listen to before going out for a game, the poetry of what’s written in Welsh, some of the expression in that language . . . if they’re translated into English the feeling isn’t there. You’ve lost the poetry of it and you can’t describe it unless you understand the language.

“If we lost the language in Wales a huge part of our heritage and culture would be lost, and it’s great the language is still a big part of daily life. Nineteen per cent of the population still speak it, even if there was a drop of one per cent or so in the last census. I’d say half of the Welsh team can speak the language — most of the backs, for some reason.”

He doesn’t see a need for sweeping changes to the laws in rugby, by the way.

“When people ask me I point to the Ireland-New Zealand and South Africa-New Zealand games this year, which are probably two games people will remember for a long time. It shows there’s nothing wrong with the laws of the game when it produces two contests like that. I think it’s a matter of getting teams to go out and play and getting a referee to encourage them to play. I think the scrum laws as they are now have shown that things are getting better. If we keep working on that and encourage teams to be positive.

“Rugby’s been through a lot of changes in the last ten years or so and I don’t see it going through as many changes in the next ten. The one thing I’d say is that the TMO protocol is starting to come too much into the game. It’s interfering with the flow of the game and gives you, as a referee, the out to go and check something when you don’t need to. That can take an edge away from you. Technology is fine to get correct decisions but over-using it, which is happening now, is not good for the game.”

Should there be a limited number of challenges, as in tennis? “Maybe the coach or captain could have one chance to challenge a decision in the first-half, same in the second. And if you’re wrong, you’ve lost the chance. That might be something worth trialling.

“Some games now have eight TMO calls, which is too much. I try my damn hardest to referee the game but because it’s in the back of your mind in any situation there’s a 0.01 per cent chance that you could be wrong, human nature suggests you go and check it.

“But that takes the edge away for a referee, and if you lose that edge you’re on a slippery slope. You’ll end up with robots refereeing games who are checking everything with the TMO. If you referee and apply the laws with empathy and understanding, stepping in when the players do something they shouldn’t, then the game will look after itself. A good referee can’t make a bad game good, but a bad referee can make a good game bad.”

Likewise with the concussion protocol, though he points out the referee has the ultimate call there, which many people aren’t aware of: “The power there is with the referee; if you think a player doesn’t look fine, you can tell the coach to take him off. You rarely have to do that because the medical people are sensible and have their own integrity which demands they respond appropriately. I think it’s fine as it is now, they can check for signs of concussion and it’s important because player safety is paramount.

“I’ve never had to tell a team take a player off; I’ve noticed once or twice a player looks dodgy but even as I’ve thought that a medic has come on to examine them.”