Wayne Barnes

I remember it so well, 2017 Six Nations, Ireland were going for a late pushover maul, and it looks like they've scored.

I think it was Wayne Barnes refereeing, sticks the arm up, penalty against.

It was Robbie Henshaw had, had done that, come in.

Can't remember who he had joined ahead of, probably Rory Best or someone like that.

Absolutely.

You bring up Wayne Barnes and people will fly into a rage this day.

That was 20 years ago.

We love it.

That's footy.

And Wayne Barnes said it before he come in as a coach.

He said, we're going to lose some games.

We are going to lose some games on the way to the World Cup.

Okay.

Wayne Barnes.

Yeah,

there's a few things that we could get to the bottom of with Wayne, I think.

The second stage to the challenge system is you then play it out in front of everyone on the big screens with the audio.

We had Wayne Barnes, a rugby union ref, come in to one of our meetings just before we first had, first Premier League, first Premier League season with VAR, and he said that they, they'd had that experience in rugby union where they'd just taken it out of the stadium, done it elsewhere, and then delivered a decision through the referee that wasn't communicated to anyone.

And no one... people didn't accept that outcome often, and they also just d- felt excluded from the process.

So they started doing that, and they do it now, don't they? Where they actually will stand on the field and go, "Right, I can see what he's done.

French is pretty good.

Wayne Barnes' French wasn't as good as he thought it was.

I remember the French captain once telling him, please, Wayne, just we're okay with English.

Speak

Of course.

Like a Wayne Barnes, for instance.

Mm.

A Dickie Bird.

Mind you, when the bomb squad came on and the bomb squad was good, they didn't really move the meter much until we started to see the yellow cards.

And I just wish the world of rugby would have 20 Wayne Barnes's because Wayne Barnes would not have gone to four yellow cards.

He's a referee who could make his own decision out there.

It wasn't, almost intimidated by a TMO.

you know, if I'm a referee, like, I'm going, mate, I'm the guy who's the top dog in this game out there.

I'm not going to be continually overrun by a buddy, a TMO, or even one of my buddy linesman out there.

Who's got, got opinion and you watch Wayne Barnes referee again, and you could see the TMI go to him out there.

He said, I've seen that.