I never liked his reffing of offside. He seemed happy to let the defensive team steal six inches to a foot.
I like his style,especially the rather anachronistic use of 'fellas', and the French he employed, but the game right now needs to penalise the rush defense if it steals so much as a millimeter, because it is boring as hell to watch this arsewipe garbage and promotes negative kick chase rugby in response. Barnes, like Owens before him, likes to let the game flow as time went on. A fair transition, as many refs like CMK, for example, go from over enthusiastic whistlers to chilling out. It is what you want from a ref generally. Blowing for a millimeter offside was against both Barnes and Owen's ethos, but it needs to be enforced for the good of the game.
If the next time a player rushes drom 6 inches offside they get pinged they don't do it again. If the world's leading refs don't do it, they give the green light to continue. Keep pinging them and we get a better game. Ditto the scrum feed to the second row. If the Barnes of this world won't start pinging in the twilight of their careers when they are untouchable , who on earth will?
In short it is rugby's problem, and Barnes going won't improve refereeing, quite the opposite if the next best are Peyper and Bent O Keefe, but I would have hoped that in his last couple of years that Barnes would have been a little more keen on enforcing the often not enforced laws.
I do wish him and his family well, however, and am grateful for his service.