Loved the last point - he knew that as a referee he was obliged to give a penalty for offside, but as a rugby fan he wanted the result to come from the players. Totally sympathise with that, and thankfully for him he got his wish!

"this game I believe is played in heaven"

What an honest account of refereeing under the pressure of the world watching you.

The best rugby game ever had

Never even thought about it being on Jonny's wrong foot before, makes it even more amazing!!

When an Australian commentator says the referee’s doing an outstanding job you can read quite a lot into his performance.

Fantastic point of view. Totally well said Mr Watson!

Havn't seen this vid before. As others have said - love his last point about not looking forward to giving the penalty

Martin johnson's HUGE!

Good interview

Why didn't he signal advantage to England.. ?? Still got to like his take on things!!

I wasnt born when this happened . But over locldown i studied old games of rugby union ,cricket amd football . And ive watched the 2003 final twice . From a journalist point of view old games are fascinating . And from a sports persons view i believe that a referees vision is a key part to the game . So when im training with team.mates i always try and tell them poinys .on where the ref stands in situations.

Had André Watson's refereeing been fair and unbiased that day, England would've won by 10-15 points.

An icon of the game

Reminds me so much of John Clease (actually Basil Faulty).

Watson played 16 for Gold …. he hated England !!

The greatest union game ever,Elton flatly had the biggest balls ever seen on a rugby field

What a man!

Respect Andre

This game is played in heaven...true words

If England had known there was an advantage, JW could have deliberately missed the drop attempt and eat the clock up with the penalty so there would have been no restart. Game over. As it was, there was a restart. If Oz had won the restart and scored, I doubt Andre would be giving this interview. Still, all's well that ends well - small margins. On a separate note, I was at a rugby dinner in Hong Kong where Jason Leonard was asked about the scrum penalties. He admitted that Watson got it right. I am English and was at the game. General consensus there was that AW did a pretty good job. England should have won more comfortably in normal time - Ben Kaye missed a certain try and JW 3 missed drops (unusual for him).

I thought he was an awesome ref. It'll be interesting to see Joubert's view on 2011 considering the flak he got after the game.

Great vid

Great video

Never in the history of Rugby has a team that has been so dominant in the scrum, given away so many penalties! It just does not make any sense.

An interesting perspective you rarely get to hear

After this match i sat down and wrote my feelings about how this moment made me feel as an Englishman...i then wrote a lyrical piece of poetry about those feelings, hoping to turn that moment of pride about my country into something worthy and beautiful. Sadly i lost that piece of writing. In between 2003 and 2013(for ten years), i searched high and low(pardon the pun) for that poetic piece of writing. In that time i made many connections in the Music Industry and told many writers i may one day stumble across this piece of writing......then a miracle happened...I FOUND IT....a Soprano sang it after a musician wrote music for it....and we released it. This is my gentle little gift to all the folk all over the world who love their country England...and for anyone else who may enjoy it....it may never have been written if Jonny Wilkinson hadn't put that ball through those sticks!! Nice one Jonny..and the England Team...maybe it might become England's National Anthem one fine day. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/nruHod2GzJPVaas.html ENJOY.....it is a simple recording...with a beautiful voice and can also be found on Spotify...SWEET LADY ENGLAND by Hannah Drury. An English rose for and English anthem for English heroes.

Watson in my view did his best to negate a dominant English scrum.

Best rugby moment good to see the refs view

Top ref he was.

So good listening and watching from the refs point of view.

Seemed to have an odd approach to collapsing scrums...

Andre Watson. Legend. From Scotland.

It was good to hear the refs point of view, albeit we as English supporters could never rationalise how he had penalised the scrummages throughout the match. Everyone knows how front rows disguise their foul play as a feature of the match, and that is a sad consequence of their game. No one likes watching repetitive scrummaging and resulting penalties. The answer has to be discovered within changing the rules to some extent, albeit we don’t want Rugby League type rubbish, but there has to be a sensible answer. Could there possibly be tap/short free kicks for some offences instead of scrums?

I thought we were gonna see a GoPro view of the goal!

one of the best refereed finals of any rugby tournament - didn't acknowledge it at the time, but looking back on it (obvs with the 2003 laws in mind) he performed brilliantly

Last minute of normal time, he had “no hesitation” awarding a penalty to Australia. Last minute of extra time he saw an obvious penalty to England but didn’t award it because he “wanted the players to decide it”. Uh-huh. Confirmed what we suspected back then. He was never going to give that pen for offside.

What was the lead up to England having possession at the end with Wilkinson's field goal? I only heard this game on the radio and it sounded like Matt Rogers executed a little chip kick near his own line that allowed England possession. Is this correct and if so why didn't he boot it way downfield out of drop goal range?

Thank you Andre you are a grand man

Imagine having to call that offsides. That would bet the scariest thing ever.

Andre was a great referee - didn’t agree with his officiating of scrums on the day but he was consistent throughout the game.

Ref was enjoying himself so much he let Australia back in it for extra time 😅

Wobbly wobbly

I've gotta call it...andre watson was the reason the final was so close... just ref the game not the occasion...he very nearly screwed England over

Jonny Bloody Wilkinson!! UHHH!!

Didn’t mind giving the penalty that allowed Australia to equalise so what he says about the final dg is just rubbish. He was happy to make himself the star of the show, by giving the most biased performance in a world cup final.

Bent ref..

that said very hard job n thanx to all refs cos games f..d without em

Didn't have a great game in my opinion .Some mysterious penalties against England. Saying that if Ben kay hadn't dropped that pass England would have won easily .

4:05

The way he changed how he dealt with the scrums in the second half was a disgrace.

WATSON... you can't get much more of an English name!! Except Smith of course 😁🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏉

I know it’s irrelevant now because England won, but his refereeing in this game was the most biased and disgraceful refereeing I’ve ever seen. He did everything he could to help Australia to win. The only refereeing performance I’ve ever seen that’s anywhere near as biased was the England v Wales 6 nations game recently where the French ref gifted the Welsh the game. And I’m not saying this as a bitter England fan, I’m welsh. I detest bias in sport

He would never have given a penalty.

didn't greig laidlaw hit him in the head against Italy at murrayfield with the ball

I must have watched this game at least 10 times. He did nothing but try to penalise England of the park. Australia never tried to pack down properly in the scrums . Leonard himself said they had to let the Aussies win there own scrums to make sure they engaged properly. We won the world cup against 16 men not 15.

Fantastic Ref 👊🏼

No close your eyes and imagine England beating the ABs next week....

The best refs always seem to come from SA.

Should have signalled the penalty .......poor refereeing 😡

Good ref

He can spin it how he likes, but he had a shocker that night. England were totally dominant in the scrum, yet in the 2nd half, he kept penalising them. It became personal, which reflects very badly on his part.

Thank goodness it wasn’t Paddy O’Brien..👍👍

Robespierre, it wouldn't work, the games are too different. you couldn't do a scrum because the helmets would be too big.

He’s bent like all South African refs (Joubert). He was selected for that reason. Why did he ref two finals while the others didn’t ref one. He was pinging England for everything and the Aussies for nothing. He didn’t signal a penalty advantage for the Wilkinson drop goal .

not sure it was his job to wonder about best team' seems already youve lost nuetralility, when ya job is to be nuetral'

He is really bigging himself up here. I wanted it to be won by a bit of brilliance by the players. Bollocks. He just played advantage to see if the non offending team could make anything happen. Not rocket science. Refs do that automatically many times every game when one team commits an offence and the other retains possession

You were a disgrace that night Watson. We still won though :)

Shame he didn't referee the game equitably - not his best performance as an International referee

He was rubbish in the final.

Not for the first time this odious little man tried his best to ref England out of the game, was going to give a penalty if he missed, yeah right Watson

He was awful. Gave Australia any and every opportunity to get back into the game. Doubt he would have given that offside penalty at the end.

Not for the first time this horrible little man tried his best to ref England off the park

Rubbish performance that night by Watson. He changed the rules half way through to stop England being some dominant. He admitted it to the English guys. And he did not half do some thinking during Dawson passing to Wilkinson. The man is full of shite

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