How Nigel Owens Won the Hearts of the Rugby World

On Thursday the Telegraph published its list of the top 50 most powerful people in rugby.

It’s the kind of list that can stretch clubhouse debates into the wee hours and still end up with as many different orders of rugby’s big names as there are people sitting around the table.

The great players and coaches dominate the top 20 before we begin to see some of the money men and the game’s high-powered executives take their places.

But by far the smallest category of entrants is that of the game’s referees. One makes the list, to be exact.

Come on down No. 32, otherwise known as Nigel Owens.

The 44-year-old sits just one place behind Rupert Murdoch and two behind Toulon sugar daddy Mourad Boudjellal. He also ranks higher than several illustrious names, including Bryan Habana, Sam Warburton and Jonny Sexton.

Final destination

Owen’s fellow officials, Wayne Barnes and Jerome Garces, will take charge of this weekend’s Rugby World Cup semi-finals, leading many to conclude that the final will be handed to the man from Carmarthenshire.

It doesn’t take much research to uncover criticism of sporting officials—not much at all in this past week.

Rugby and football in particular boast many a referee who polarizes opinion as much as some of the most talked about players and coaches.

But the standing of Owens at this present moment appears to be firmly in the positive.

In fact, there is a case that Owens is the most-loved referee the game has ever seen. Let’s widen that out to sport. Perhaps, the most loved referee sport has ever known.

The human touch

Owens has reached this status through a well-measured combination of the authority of a school disciplinarian and the human touch lacked by other referees.

He has a nice line of self-deprecation and has delivered some of the best put-downs to players that has those watching at home rolling off their sofas and players on the other end trotting away like scolded children.

Owens also earned the respect of the rugby community for his bravery in coming out in 2007 and talking openly about how difficult he found life as a gay man surrounded by the macho world of rugby.

On top of the warm reaction he received, he was also able to widen his on-field repertoire, as this snippet from a club match illustrates.

Dealing with the big brutes

The scrummage is often a matter of guesswork for the referee as to who is at fault for a collapse.

It's for that reason you’ll often see a scrum re-set rather than a penalty given straight away. Better to get a second look as the referee in the hope your suspicions abut the possible culprit are confirmed.

That was the route taken by Owens in this game between Munster and Toulouse. After too many engagements ended in a heap, he had no qualms letting the front rows know the score, telling one of them that if he didn’t like scrummaging he was in the wrong position.

World Cup performances

Most recently, Owens has been on top form when it comes to rebuking players during the World Cup, as Scotland’s Stuart Hogg found out after hitting the floor all too easily in the referee’s view against South Africa.

And he also left Georgian prop Davit Zirakashvili in no doubt about who was boss during the Lelos’ clash with Tonga.

The best barometer of Owens' standing can be found in the opinion of the players he officiates, as Jerome Pugmire of the Associated Press (h/t Yahoo) wrote:

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On the tournament's opening weekend he had words with Georgia captain Mamuka Gorgodze.  A behemoth even by rugby standards, Gorgodze crouched, hands on knees, and nodded respectfully as Owens spoke. "I've had three penalties here now, if I think the next one is deliberate I'll sin-bin someone...I'm not going to start the clock until you've had a word about discipline," he told Gorgodze. "When you're ready, let me know, and I'll start the clock." As well as giving Gorgodze a sense of responsibility, it was also a mark of respect from Owens, who prefers not to officiate in an overly strict way.

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And French back rower Yannick Nyanga also holds him in high esteem, as Pugmire wrote: "He's a very good referee, if not the best. Whatever the occasion or the context, the pressure that's surrounding a game, he's always on top of things."

Lines of communication

The right choice of phrase and tone of voice are tools not always best used by the man with the whistle.

But Owens has got his vocabulary down to an art form such that a single word is sometimes all he needs, as England skipper Chris Robshaw found out on the final day of the Six Nations.

And as Tobias Botes of Treviso discovered, Owens is not a referee who will put up with too much pestering from players looking for decisions from the man in the middle

It is often said that the best referees are the ones you don’t notice. Indeed, in her introduction to a piece entitled 10 of the Most Hated Sports Officials, on richest.com Jessica Keeling wrote:

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Really, a good way to know if an official is doing their job is by how many people know their name. Referees and umpires seek anonymity in their day-to-day jobs because it generally means you got the right call.

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Nigel Owens is the exception that proves the rule. The way he runs a game and speaks to his players, coupled with the fact that we can now hear much of what he has to say thanks to the microphones worn at the highest level of the game, means everyone knows who Nigel Owens is.

He's one of the 50 most powerful people in rugby, and he should be the man in charge on October 31.