During the recent rugby World Cup finals in France Wayne Barnes, the English referee, was more abused on social media than any other player or official at the tournament. “I was 500 per cent more abused than the second most abused person, Antoine Dupont [France’s captain],” he told me, calmly and without self-pity, one recent morning when we met in a coffee shop in the City of London. Nearby were the offices of the law firm Squire Patton Boggs where he is a partner, having begun his career more than two decades earlier as a criminal barrister at 3 Temple Gardens.
Barnes, who is 44, refereed the World Cup final between New Zealand and South Africa at the Stade de France in Paris on 28 October – his last match before retiring from rugby union, the game that has defined his life since he became a referee aged 15 in Gloucestershire. He grew up on a council estate in Bream, a village in the Forest of Dean, and retains the distinctive local accent.
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