We were all in fits of laughter in the changing room. Priceless. Imagine that one had been caught on the mic!” We smiled. I was taken into this large banquet room where I started chatting to my fellow guests before the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh entered. I was introduced to Prince Philip first. ‘Sir, this is Nigel Owens who refereed the 2015 World Cup final.’ It is something I'm looking forward to but also a bit of realisation that this could be my last Test match." People clearly did, still do, and that's fine. As far as I'm concerned though, anything I said was simply me being me as a referee, interacting with a player and just trying to get my point across." When I uttered those seemingly innocuous words to Botes, I had absolutely no idea they would go viral. None whatsoever; this was simply a case of me as a referee dealing with what I saw as dissent on the field of play.

It was entirely possible at one stage that none of that would have happened. I’m so glad it did, creating many more memories – and the odd controversy or three! Whatever, once more I merely said what came naturally at the time. Scotland’s captain Greig Laidlaw, who was listening in, was grinning, Hogg started giggling to himself a little, accepting the rebuke and admitting he was wrong. It’s Six Nations Super Saturday, England versus France, and Chris Robshaw’s team England are falling just short in their bid to win by 26 points and wrest the title from Ireland. I’d not refereed Treviso for a few years and pretty early on I noticed their scrum-half moaning about my decisions, gesturing, waving his arms in the air. The first thing that went through my mind was, ‘Hang on a minute, I don’t think I’ve refereed this guy before’. If I had, I felt he’d have known better than to be acting like this. I got on really well with them all, as I did with Martyn’s predecessor as WRU boss, Roger Lewis, another who was always been hugely supportive of me and indeed referees as a whole.

Ah yes, I do like a bit of rugby. Tell me Nigel, why don’t they put the ball in straight at a scrum any more?’ It's been a strange one this week because I had TB [bovine tuberculosis] testing on the farm on Monday and thankfully everything was fine," Owens tells BBC Sport Wales. Owens, then 44, says he understood the wish to bring through the next generation of referees as well, but explains he ‘wanted some piece of mind' as he had no intention of finishing. A European Cup game at The Stoop between Robshaw’s Harlequins and Castres. A lineout throw from Quins hooker Dave Ward is so crooked it’s caught by team-mate Robshaw almost in the scrum-half position.

That moment made sure he "refereed every game afterwards as if it was a World Cup final," whatever the level. Again, these are moments I can never forget. Having been privileged enough to meet Prince Philip, I was so sad to learn of his passing in April 2021 at the age of 99. What a wonderful servant he was to the whole of the United Kingdom, a man of incredible honour and kindness who did so much good for so many people, not least with his Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme." This wasn’t the first time the police had been involved in a game officiated by Owens, although the other occasion was far from funny. As a ‘teenage refereeing rookie’ he was in charge of a match between the Dyfed Powys Police B team and Cefneithin. Spreaders, a good friend of mine, said, ‘Nigel, I will support you 100 per cent and the RFU will welcome you with open arms. But you need to be prepared that this will be headline news. As long as you’re prepared for that, then I don’t see it as a problem at all’.

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As for his biggest rugby regret, that didn't come in one of the many high-profile matches Owens took charge of, but actually in a Welsh Schools under-18s game when he sent off a Gowerton youngster when matters got out of hand between the teams. After chatting for a while about other things amongst ourselves, we sat down for a meal. If you can imagine it being Christmas Day, with one of those huge family tables everyone gathers around, well that was pretty much what the scene was like inside the Palace. Only on a much grander scale, needless to say. What it meant to the village and what it meant to me, the fact that the village was so proud of me achieving that, it was special because of that. Then it was the turn of the rest of us to reach out and take our food off the beautiful silver serving platters as the waiters stood by our side. Think of Downton Abbey – if you’ve seen that famous British TV drama series, that’s exactly the way lunch was served.