“If things like that are going to ruffle your feathers, don’t bother doing the job.”

Coaches will do what they can but it doesn’t necessarily bother me.

If you get those two aspects right, most rugby matches will work in your favour.

I will know some of the personalities, the players who could be difficult customers in a scrum situation.

But then southern hemisphere teams are more skilful than their northern hemisphere counterparts, which means games can be easier to referee.

I have three tools at my disposal – my whistle, my body language and my talk.

The ones I am going to have to really work hard on early in the game to get what I want.

I could give 48 penalties in every match if I wanted to.

You are an international referee for a reason.

The objective of a referee is not to get mentioned. I tell a lot of young referees that not being mentioned is king.

Failure comes when you don’t listen.

The scrum and the tackle are the two really contentious areas of the game.

Coaches do so much research about a referee because they believe refereeing is such a crucial part of the game that the result may hinge on what we say or do.

It is a question of sometimes choosing what is – in your own mind – of material importance and what isn’t, what might be a crucial potential penalty and what might not be.

It’s up to us to make sure we’re listening to improve our chances for success-if not this time, next time.

It is a question of how I marry them up to try to get the players around to my way of thinking.

If at first you don’t succeed, get a bigger hammer.

On the contrary, there is a considerable body of evidence that these fossil traces, known as ‘dino-fuzz’, have nothing to do with bird feathers…

Feathers are light; but when they come together, they become heavy!

I am troubled, immeasurably by your eyes. I am struck by the feather of your soft reply.

The feather was a thing, when I was a kid, we used to find feathers around the house, and whenever we found them, my mum used to say it was my nan leaving them around for us to find, so that was quite sweet.

Soft feathers cannot make a cruel bird kind.

Our wings are built from the feathers of failure.

She plucked a feather from her magnificent wings and dipped it in ink. She wrote poems bled from her scars guided straight from the depths of her heart.

The company you keep has a large influence on the situations you bring to yourself. Birds of a feather flock together.