By Kevin Redsull

When Matthew Carley takes charge of his first Rugby World Cup game this Sunday, it will represent another significant milestone in his professional refereeing career.

Carley will be in charge of the Pool C match between Wales and Fiji in Bordeaux, followed by two other matches in Pool A, having been one of the assistant referees at the World Cup in Japan in 2019.

But this time the 38-year-old from Deal has been selected as one of the 12 match referees.

He said: “I was the first reserve referee in Japan and so just missed out on the referees’ group, and so I’m excited by the fact that I will be in charge of at least three games in France.

“But I’m hoping that I will also be under consideration to referee one of the Quarter-Finals as well.”

Whether that happens or not, Carley will have already added another big notch on a refereeing CV which stretches back more than 20 years after he started taking charge of local junior matches while playing youth rugby for Canterbury.

Rugby is in Carley’s blood. His father, Malcolm, had played for several east Kent clubs while his late grandfather John was the Kent RFU president for four years.

And his bond with the sport grew even stronger when, in 2004, he became the first undergraduate student in the country to receive a rugby refereeing scholarship while studying at the University of Gloucestershire.

On completing his sports science degree, Carley taught PE locally while continuing to referee on a Saturday but he was, eventually, offered the chance to become one of the RFU’s full-time referees.

He refereed his first Premiership match 10 years ago and his first Six Nations Championship match in 2019 - and now his first World Cup contest beckons.

Carley, who lives with girlfriend Chloe and children Jack and Lily, took charge of the World Cup warm-up between South Africa and New Zealand in front of a capacity 80,000 crowd at Twickenham last month.

“I feel it’s good to have some nerves before a match because that anxiety helps you to prepare well, and you also need to feel a bit of excitement,” he admitted.

“Then, it’s probably down to the amount of experience you’ve got that enables you to mix it all together in the right amount before the game.

“If you allow yourself to get too excited beforehand, it affects your sleep in the build-up to the match and it also makes you mentally tired because your brain is going too much during the day.

“So I don’t start my game prep until three or four days before an international, the same as I do for a Premiership game, to ensure that I’m not mentally or physically drained by the time I get to the day of the game - and you only learn that sort of thing by experience.”

Carley’s dad, Chloe and many other close friends and family will be in the crowd at two of the World Cup group matches he is officiating - the Wales versus Fiji game and also the Pool A match between New Zealand and Italy in Lyon on September 29.

A week earlier, he will be refereeing the France against Namibia Pool A game in Marseille.

He added: “The atmosphere at that one should be tremendous, and one thing I did observe at the last World Cup was that the behaviour of the players and the coaches can change a bit because of the extra pressure that they are all under - people’s jobs could be on the line.”

Now that Carley has a permanent RFU contract he knows he can look forward to working towards being involved at the 2027 World Cup in Australia.

But as far as he’s concerned it’s one game at a time, starting with the Wales versus Fiji clash which - following the latter’s recent victory over England - will certainly draw a lot more media interest than might have been the case a few months ago!