World Cup final referee had heart surgery midway through tournament

In an extract from Wayne Barnes: Throwing the Book, the referee of the World Cup final reveals how he travelled home in secret during last year’s tournament to undergo heart surgery.

Training with [my fellow officials] Karl Dickson and Christophe Ridley is enough to give an old man a cardiac arrest. Karl only retired from playing a few years ago, Christophe is barely into his thirties.

So when my heart rate started going through the roof during a running session [at the Rugby World Cup] in Paris, I wasn’t overly concerned at first. Maybe I hadn’t slept well, maybe I hadn’t eaten enough for breakfast, maybe I’d drunk too much coffee. Whatever it was, I thought my heart would go back to normal if I just took things a little bit easier.

But 15 minutes into what should have been a nice gentle jog, I looked at my watch and my heart rate was up at 230 beats per minute. To add some context, my resting heart rate is around 50 beats per minute. When I’m busting a gut during a game, it may reach 175. My legs were like wet spaghetti, I couldn’t fill my lungs. And I was refereeing the crucial pool game between Wales and Australia four days later.

You might remember that I’d had ticker issues in the past. Back in 2009, I’d been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation and had an ablation operation. A few years after that, I went into tachycardia, which basically means my heart was racing and unable to regulate itself, and my cardiologist Richard Schilling had to reboot it.

So naturally I wondered if the same thing was happening again. And while I wasn’t scared, as in, ‘S---, I’m going to die’, I did worry that my fifth and final World Cup might be over almost before it had started. I had already refereed a pool game between Ireland and Tonga, but that’s not how I wanted to sign off.

Wayne Barnes in charge of the 2023 Rugby World Cup final in Paris.Credit: Getty

I rested on Friday morning and my heart calmed down. I didn’t even bother telling [my wife] Polly about it because I thought it had rectified itself. But the first thing she said when she arrived in Paris that afternoon and got a look at me was, “You’re not well. What’s wrong?”

I travelled down to Lyon the following day, and my heart hadn’t stopped racing by the Sunday, when the game was taking place. So now I was in a bit of a dilemma: if I told the bosses about my issue, my tournament – and refereeing career – would be over; but if I refereed the game, I was worried that I’d be miles off the pace. I didn’t think I’d collapse, I just thought I might let the players down.

My heart kept speeding up and slowing down all day, but I decided I was going to do the game. When I looked at my watch during my warm-up, it was already running at 180 bpm. I crossed my fingers and hoped it would rectify itself before kick-off. Unfortunately, it didn’t.

I thought, ‘Oh s---, I’m in trouble here…’

Three minutes into the game, Wales executed a move off a lineout and scrum-half Gareth Davies went flying over for a try. It was a start I could have done without, seeing as it required me to run about 50 metres. I thought, ‘Oh s---, I’m in trouble here …’

I limited my running as much as possible for the rest of the first half, which both teams made easier for me by giving loads of penalties away, but I knew I had to tell my fellow referees during the break.

A camera crew was following us around for a documentary, but once they’d got a bit of footage of us talking about our first-half performance, I asked them to leave.

Once the camera crew had made themselves scarce, I said to my fellow refs – an all-English team of Luke Pearce, Christophe and TMO Tom Foley – “Right, a bit of a problem, my heart has started racing, but it has happened before and I’m sure it will be fine.”

A slight underplay you might say, but I didn’t want to worry them.

Referee Wayne Barnes penalises the Wallabies in the early moments of their World Cup loss to Wales.Credit: Getty

When I refereed Ireland versus France in the 2023 Six Nations, the ball was in play for 47 minutes. But that night in Lyon, the ball was in play for just 31 minutes. Tries and shots at goal slow the game down and there were three tries and eight penalty kicks that night. Had it been a tighter game, I’d have been in trouble.

Luckily, Wales hammered the Aussies 40-6, and I didn’t have to make any match-defining decisions. And far from being disappointed with my performance, the selectors said it was as good as I’d ever refereed.

I didn’t have a beer during the debrief in the changing room, which was the first time that had ever happened. That was also the first time I’d ever answered the phone from the changing room immediately after the match; Polly rang and asked if I was OK, to which I replied, “Not really.”

I woke up the following morning thinking my World Cup was probably over, which was a devastating feeling. I’d muddled through Wales-Australia, but it wouldn’t have been fair on the teams to referee another game in that kind of condition. However, I thought I might still have one trump card up my sleeve: Richard Schilling.

When I called to tell him what was going on, he replied saying he thought I’d looked fine. When I told him I hadn’t felt fine, he told me to get hold of an Apple watch and send him an ECG reading. I did so and he replied saying my heart was in tachycardia again, but that he could see me in London the following day. He made it sound as if it was nothing more than a cold, which put my mind at rest.

As luck would have it, Wednesday was our day off, so I booked myself a 6am flight and was back in London before breakfast. I shaved my chest at the request of the nurses and got all garbed up when Richard appeared with the anaesthetist.

“Here’s the guy who’s going to knock you out,” he said, casual as anything. “Everything will be fine. I’ll see you in a few hours.” The anaesthetist asked me what game I was meant to be refereeing next, and I replied, “If I wake up again, it’s Scotland versus Romania on Saturday.”

While I was out for the count, Richard restarted my heart, and when I saw him again, he told me it had all gone to plan. Richard told me my left ventricle was still enlarged, that he might have to perform another ablation somewhere down the line, but that I’d be OK for the rest of the tournament.

I had decided not to tell the bosses what was going on because I thought they might panic, and they’d have had every right to stand me down.

After all, if a player told their coach that they’d just had a heart operation under general anaesthetic, it’s highly unlikely they’d let them play a game a few days later.

I got myself back to Paris and, the following day, I travelled to Lille for the pool game between Scotland and Romania, hoping that the heart incident was a one-off.

Richard had given me a special pill, so that if my heart did start racing during the game, I’d take it, my heart would calm down and I’d hopefully make it through to the final whistle.

I managed to conceal my shaven chest and the burn mark from the paddle that had been used to jump-start my heart from my fellow referees in the changing room – it was an Aussie and two Kiwis this time – and got lucky with another one-sided affair, Scotland trouncing Romania 84–0. I didn’t even have to pop Richard’s special pill.

On the Monday, following the epic Ireland v New Zealand quarter-final, Joel Jutge called me into his office and said, “Wayne, we thought you were great. Congratulations, you’re going to referee the final.”

Despite all the big decisions we had – things could have got pretty hairy for me had we not had the bunker system doing most of the dirty work – I massively enjoyed it. It was a classic match-up in the magnificent Stade de France. It was the best possible way to bow out.

As we waited for the presentation ceremony, I watched the fireworks with Polly and the kids on the touchline, while trying to find Richard and his daughter in the crowd. I’d sent them a couple of tickets as a gift, because if it weren’t for him, I’d have watched the game from my living room in Twickenham.

The Telegraph, London