Nigel Owens: The Final Whistle

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My village of Mynyddcerrig [in Carmarthenshire, west Wales] had bunting and flags out, everyone in the working men's club that week enjoying themselves and people coming from everywhere.

Martyn, Geraint and Gats hadn’t been aware of my situation. Once they were, to be fair, they acted decisively on my behalf. I will always be grateful for that. Then it was the turn of the rest of us to reach out and take our food off the beautiful silver serving platters as the waiters stood by our side. Think of Downton Abbey – if you’ve seen that famous British TV drama series, that’s exactly the way lunch was served.

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Apparently, Gats had gone straight in the following day after the dinner to say he wasn’t sure what was going on, ‘But you need to give Nige a new contract and give it to him right now. You need to hold on to your best referee, not just for the next World Cup but also so that he can work with and coach future referees after he’s finished.’ The world's most popular referee details the tale in his eagerly awaited autobiography 'The Final Whistle' , which is on sale from this week and is being serialised by Wales Online. I’m told there were a few mutterings that I might be retiring after the World Cup. Indeed, the producer of the S4C rugby show, Clwb Rygbi, approached me after I’d done the PRO12 final in Belfast between Munster and Glasgow and asked if I’d like to come to work for them as I was due to hang up my boots, or whistle, so to speak. It's been a stressful week so the game itself has been far from my mind this week with the TB testing, which can be heart-breaking if the result is positive - but thankfully everything was negative and all was good thankfully.

Nigel Owens is a one-off, a top flight rugby referee who became the best in the world and remains one of the game’s most popular ambassadors.

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People clearly did, still do, and that's fine. As far as I'm concerned though, anything I said was simply me being me as a referee, interacting with a player and just trying to get my point across." It was in the main a story of acceptance, even though he has faced some homophobic barbs and poison pen letters, not to mention death threats following some of his on-field decisions.

The law is quite clear, the maul is formed, held up, unplayable, turnover ball, no issues whatsoever,’ I explained to the skipper. Of all the sayings and stories in this warm and affable memoir there’s one that stands out rather. It derives from Owens’ one and only visit to take charge of a game in Gilfach Goch. Owens was the official to spot the error, and he feared a great occasion might be cast in shadow. Amid the disappointment of the match situation, Jean de Villiers showed his colours.

'This is Not Soccer!'

A European Cup game at The Stoop between Robshaw’s Harlequins and Castres. A lineout throw from Quins hooker Dave Ward is so crooked it’s caught by team-mate Robshaw almost in the scrum-half position. Newcastle were playing Norwich at St James’ in a fortnight and again, in my eyes it was merely a reference to some of the play-acting that can blight football and I was letting Hogg know what he did wasn’t acceptable. I don’t know why I uttered those particular words, maybe I’d watched a few football games beforehand and saw attempts to con the referee which annoyed me? There were people driving down from Merthyr, from Pontypool, up from Cardigan, some down from Aberystwyth. People were driving down to see the village I was born in because it was on the news that week.