Welsh referee Nigel Owens was in a bit of a pickle this morning. He's supposed to be traveling to Dublin today for the Leinster v Zebre game, but was briefly stranded in Bristol because he's forgotten his passport, and Ryanair would not let him board their plane.
Luckily for him, a certain airline saw an opportunity to one-up their rivals, and he'll arrive in Dublin with plenty of time to spare.
Massive thanks @aerlingus for sorting flight to Dublin for me from Cardiff now after RyanAir passport policy debacle pic.twitter.com/S92bzJhjOf
— Nigel Owens (@Nigelrefowens) February 20, 2015
As embarrassing an oversight as it was, Owens is far from the only sporting figure to make a mess of his travel arrangements.
Here's a few more you might remember.
Eden Hazard
In Novemeber 2013, Chelsea's star winger Eden Hazard was granted some time to return to his former club Lille to meet his old team mates and watch their game against Monaco.
While attempting to get the Eurostar back to London, Hazard realised he had lost his passport, which resulted in him missing Monday morning training. Though apologetic, Jose Mourinho dropped him for Chelsea's next match aganist Schalke, saying:
"He’s a kid. Kids make mistakes and fathers have to be clever in the way they educate their sons. He didn’t play. He wanted to play."
Jason Tovey
It may be the oldest excuse in the book, but former Cardiff Blues star Jason Tovey really did have his papers eaten by a dog.
Ahead of a Heineken Cup matchup with Toulon in 2013, Tovey's puppy Buster shredded his passport, leaving him unable to travel to the game.
Though disappointed, the Welshman at least saw the humour in it:
“It’s a bit like the old schoolboy excuse that the dog ate my homework,” he said to the BBC.
Graeme Swann
English cricket fans were a bit worried when a rather sheepish tweet came from the account of Graeme Swann the day before the team's flight to Perth for the 2010 Ashes:
"Are passports still absolutely required to travel overseas? If so then I fear today may be one of frantic searching," he told his 77,000 followers.
The British Home Office were soon involved, offering to help the England and Wales Cricket Board, but all was not as it seemed.
"My passport turned up in my ‘safe’ place, down the back of my kitchen bin," Swann tweeted, even more sheepishly, about five hours later.
Robbie Savage
The much maligned BBC pundit Robbie Savage almost missed his flight to Brazil for this year's World Cup after realising he had brought his wife's passport to Heathrow instead of his own.
To the delight of football fans everywhere, his passport was deliver in the nick of time, and british Airways rushed him through security.
Savage's tweet about the incident shed some light on the mistake:
"2nd time it's happened I'm going to have to tell my wife to get her haircut', before tweeting a picture of himself and his wife with the message: 'Nearly passed for her to be fair!"
An entire referee team
In what appears to be a cursed fixture as far as passports are concerned, an entire referee team missed a Chelsea v Schalke game last September after all their documents were lost.
The Serbian crew, led by Milorad Mažić, lost their passports while applying for visas in the British embassy. Luckily, a contingency plan was in place, and another team who were due to referee a UEFA Cup game the following day stepped in.
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