Owens will be joined by fellow Welshman Tim Hayes who will be on the seven-man assistant referee panel, which means Wales have two of the 21 match officials travelling to New Zealand.
WRU national referees manager Rob Yeman feels this is a great boost to Welsh rugby.
“The IRB have selected a streamlined group of ten referees for this Rugby World Cup, there are also seven assistant refs and four television match officials, so to have two from the list of 21 is a tremendous achievement.”
Nigel Owens said: “It feels great to be selected. We were all told that if we didn’t perform in the last year, we wouldn’t be going so a lot of us were quite nervous.
“To be chosen to represent Welsh rugby as one of just ten referees is a great honour. Although I went to Rugby World Cup 2007 four years ago, I’d only officiated about half a dozen international matches at that point whereas I will have 26 or 27 under my belt this time. I think you learn a lot more from the times you don’t referee so well, and I’ve had a few of those in the last four years. Those periods make you work harder to improve your performances.”
Meanwhile, Leighton Hodges has been selected to referee at the forthcoming IRB Junior World Championship in Italy.
Yeman added: “The WRU has invested heavily in refereeing in recent years, we now have an academy in place, we’ve taken on Nigel Whitehouse as performance and development officer and his work, and that of the academy as a whole are starting to bear fruit, with Leighton Hodges’ selection to the Junior World Championship panel a great example of the referees coming through the system now.”
Owens is also employed by the WRU to help develop junior academy referees.
“My role is to watch young referees, identify those with potential and get them into our junior academy for training days on fitness, analysis and general support to get them to the next level. Nigel Whitehouse then works with the senior academy members such as Tim Hayes and Leighton Hodges.
“Without referees, there is no game and it’s also true to say that without good referees, the game will suffer. For Tim and I to be on the plane to New Zealand and for Leighton to be going to Italy shows the youngsters that there is a massive incentive for all the hard work that goes into developing top class referees.”
The IRB Match Official Selection Committee, chaired by WRU chairman David Pickering, has also selected the referees to take charge of the summer Tests, with four of the Rugby World Cup referees panel officiating Wales’ four internationals.
Ireland’s Alain Rolland will be the man in the middle when Wales take on the Barbarians on June 4, Steve Walsh (ARU) and Jonathan Kaplan (SARU) will take charge of Wales’ home and away fixtures against England, first at Twickenham on August 6, and at the Millennium Stadium on August 13, while France’s Romain Poite will referee Wales’ final warm-up game against Argentina on August 20.
WRU Group Chief Executive Roger Lewis said, “To create great rugby matches you not only need great players but you need great match officials and to have four of the ten appointed Rugby World Cup referees for our four summer games is fantastic. It’s a great tribute to Welsh rugby and the individuals will add so much to the games.
“Wales has a rich tradition of producing great referees, and we’re thrilled with the latest IRB appointments, not only for Nigel, Tim and Leighton, but for all the work that is done from grassroots upwards.”
