{"id":588284,"date":"2026-05-17T02:25:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T02:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/588284\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T02:25:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T02:25:09","slug":"nigel-owens-and-wayne-barnes-agree-on-the-worst-rugby-player-to-referee-page-3-of-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/588284\/","title":{"rendered":"Nigel Owens and Wayne Barnes agree on the worst rugby player to referee &#8211; Page 3 of 3"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>BARNES SAID:\u00a0\u201cRichie always had the knack of asking the right question at the right time. Sometimes it felt like I was losing a little bit of control. <\/p>\n<p>Contrary to popular belief, he didn\u2019t talk a lot on the field\u2014he just knew the law book inside out, and when he asked a question, he often had a point.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>OWENS SAID:\u00a0\u201cIf anybody had to pick the greatest player in history, it would surely be a difficult choice between him and Gareth Edwards.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Who was McCaw?<br \/>An All Blacks titan,\u00a0Richie McCaw\u00a0won the 2011 and 2015 Rugby World Cups and claimed\u00a0three World Rugby Player of the Year awards. With\u00a0148 caps, he became notorious for pushing the breakdown to the absolute limit\u2014operating in the shadows better than anyone before or since.<\/p>\n<p>EDITORS PICKS:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BARNES SAID:\u00a0\u201cRichie always had the knack of asking the right question at the right time. Sometimes it felt&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":588285,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-588284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=588284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/588285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}