Shaun Edwards

When Shaun Edwards first had the chance to coach England, he had no choice but to say no, he wasn’t ready. He spoke to his mum, Phyllis, and they agreed, it was too soon after his brother Billy had died. He needed the day-to-day of rugby to keep him busy. Rugby was what was going to keep him going – he wasn’t going to let his mind get the better of him.

Shaun Edwards is wearing a flat cap. No, surprise really, given he’s a Wiganer through and through. But paired with his black tee, long black coat, black trousers and shoes, an entirely single-tone wardrobe in fact, he cuts a dash and is looking suitably dapper for our shoot. It’s easy to forget when you see rugby folk in civvies, that they’re also allowed their own sense of style. 

We’re in his south west London stomping ground, a leafy stretch of the Thames, in a snug of a pub, tucked in by the river and Shaun is taking us back to his earliest days. So early, in fact, he wasn’t yet so much as a twinkle in the eye of Jackie Edwards. “My dad was a world-record signing for Warrington back in 1954, he cost them £1,000 from Wigan Schoolboys,” Shaun tells us of Jackie’s rugby league career. “He played first grade at 16, probably too young, really. But he played 223 games for Warrington [scoring 78 tries] and, when he was 24, he had a career-ending spinal injury, he slipped about four discs. It was ridiculous. 

“Care wasn’t as good in them days,” he continues, clearly thinking back as he talks, digging around for more detail. “Do you know what, it’s had an effect on his whole life – people talk about mental illness these days and there’s no doubt my dad suffered from that. 

“He was a young man, 24,” he repeats. “His best years were ahead of him and his career was over. 

“It’s quite ironic,” he says, “they used to just put you in a plaster cast in those days, it was ridiculous, so my mum had to lift him and turn him over – and then she ended up slipping a disc helping him. It wasn’t an easy time for the family.”

Shaun arrived two years after the accident, but the impact was still there. “He’s been physically disabled since then,” he says. “I’ve tried to help and provide for them, building the house up in Wigan and all that.”

It wasn’t just an aptitude for playing rugby that Shaun inherited from Jackie, but also an analytical mind, something his dad showed in what could sometimes be a lucrative hobby.

“My dad was a bright guy, he was very intelligent, he showed it in the betting,” explains Shaun. “He raised us with social support but also being really bright at picking winners. Not just fluttering away money and being a gambler, but he was a person who weighed up the odds and picked the right one. 

“My mum was a hairdresser,” he says, continuing the back story, “she used to run a business at the top of the street, but she shut that and then ran it in the bathroom upstairs. We had a house like the ones in Coronation Street, I had a great childhood.”

Like perhaps every boy in Wigan, rugby league was always going to be his game, but he played both union and league, with the latter ultimately winning out. “My dad wanted me to play, he pushed me,” explains Shaun, “I was captain for Wigan under-11s, and then when I was about 12 I started training seriously.”

Training everyday with his friend Dave Lyon, they’d head to the house of Jeff Clare, who had a gym in his backyard. It backed on to a running track that they’d also put to good use. 

It didn’t take long for the scouts to take interest. “They started coming to watch when I was 14,” he says. “There was a real famous Widnes coach called Dougie Laughton – he signed a lot of rugby union players in the 80s, a lot of the Welsh boys went up there – he was the first one who showed a lot of interest. He came to watch a game, I played terribly, got sent off and I was walking home thinking, ‘that’s it, my whole career’s over’ and he pulls up alongside me at the top of our street. I said to him, ‘I played terrible today Dougie’, and he said, ‘don’t worry about it, I just wanted to see that you had bottle’.  I think I’d showed that as I nearly had a fight with every player on their team.”

Despite Dougie’s interest, he opted for Wigan. He signed away his amateur status – effectively putting his whole life in the hands of Wigan – for a contract worth £35,000. 

“I got £10,000 up front which was a lot of money in those days, especially as I was only 17,” he recalls. “The press said I got £35,000 up front, but they forgot to mention I had to play in the first team for five years, go on a Great Britain tour and get in the team to get the full money.”

Whatever the story, as word spread of Shaun’s apparent windfall, he instantly rubbed his fellow players up the wrong way. “The other players around the league were saying, ‘who’s this kid who got £35,000 up front?’ – they weren’t too pleased about it were they?” 

Their displeasure showed in typical old school style. “After ten games playing at stand-off, I’d dislocated my shoulder, had three teeth knocked out, broke my nose and had about 25 stitches in various head wounds. I was beginning to wonder if I’d made the right bloody career choice, here!”

A particularly fearsome game against Hull KR, saw his team move the 17-year-old out of the firing line. “I got battered so they moved me to the wing. I was in at the deep end, put it that way.”

When the first-choice full-back broke his leg, Shaun stepped in, and ended up playing in a Challenge Cup final at Wembley. Although they lost, he returned a year later, scoring a try in what has been described as one of the greatest cup finals of all-time, as Wigan won 28-24 against Hull FC. It was Wigan’s first win since what should’ve been his dad’s era – 1965 – and it gave the club a taste of things to come. Three years later they’d begin a run of eight straight cup victories.

Talk of his own switch to full-back, prompts a story from his coaching days to emerge. 

“I remember when Danny Cipriani was at Wasps coming through and I said to Geech [Ian McGeechan, then director of rugby], ‘I think we need to move Danny, give him some time at full-back’. He said, ‘alright’, and he played second team and it was the worst performance you’d ever see at full-back. I remember the look Geech gave me, and I said, ‘well, he can only get better’. Four months later he was a Heineken Cup-winning full-back.”

Although continually a target, the physical side never put him off. “You’re playing one of the most physical sports in the world aren’t you? And you expect to not be in some kind of pain? Do you think boxers aren’t in pain? When they’re in training camp or sparring every day? If you don’t want to do it, go do something else.”

The frequency of honours won in league is, quite frankly, ridiculous. Nine Challenge Cups, eight Championships, three World Club Challenges and five county cups. He scored 274 tries in 467 games for Wigan. So commonplace were victory parades for his team, it’s little wonder his biggest achievement was an individual one. “I think it was when I was rated No.1 in the world in my position,” he says. “I only did it once, I got rated no.2 as a stand-off in 89 I think it was, and then in 94 we beat Brisbane away and I was rated no.1 as a scrum-half. It’s something I look back on with a lot of pride.”

He was the youngest level-two qualified coach in rugby league, aged 16. “I always wanted to be a coach,” he says. “I’d always be writing things down, everything from moves to sayings that coaches said.”

It wasn’t just rugby league either. “I’d always be reading about great boxers,” he continues, “I like boxing, I like MMA too – not so much then – but Wigan’s a big wrestling town. A lot of good wrestlers come from there, my best mate Paul Stridgeon [British & Irish Lions and Wales fitness coach], he’s a wrestler and he’s from Wigan. 

“It’s not really a boxing town funnily enough,” he muses, adding, “St Helens is though, lot of good boxers come from there.”

Judo was another sport he’s followed. “You can get good judo throws that help small people flip people over and stuff like that. Alain Langer, who was a scrum-half at Brisbane Broncos, was brilliant at flicking people over because he’d done some judo.”

His first coaching stint was for Lancashire U18s, when he was in his mid-20s, coaching a side that included a very young Jason Robinson and preparing his side for clashes against Yorkshire, coached by his Wigan team-mate Ellery Hanley.

Thanks to mum Phyllis, Shaun also started paying attention to the rival code. “I remember my mum saying to me – and she’s a bright person is my mum – that I needed to be studying rugby union as well as rugby league, because it’s going to become very big. She was very smart like that.”

An attentive Shaun first started spotting gaps, almost literally, in the union market during the 1995 Rugby World Cup. “I always remember watching Jonah Lomu [destroying defences] and wondering why everyone was doing an ‘up and out’ defence against this guy, why don’t they do an umbrella defence and cut the supply off, don’t let the ball get to him in the first place and then at least you’ve got half a chance of stopping him. 

“Rugby league has not always been ten yards you see, it was five metres up until 91-92, so we used to blitz hard at Wigan,” he says. “Me and Mike Ford or me and Andy Gregory, it was our job to fly up in the middle of the pitch and cut that supply off to the forwards – I couldn’t understand why sides they weren’t doing that [to Lomu].”

After leaving Wigan in 1997, aside from a brief spell with Bradford Bulls, he moved to London to play for London Broncos, but primarily to be near his son James and girlfriend Heather Small, of M People fame – they met after a gig, he tells us. 

After retiring in 2000, aged 34, Shaun had two spells shadowing Wayne Bennett at Brisbane Broncos, while he waited for the first coaching offers to come in. With things still quiet on the job front, he spent time ‘taking notes’ and observing the work of his friend Ellery Hanley at Bath. “I bumped into Nigel Melville [director of rugby at Wasps] when Bath played Wasps, and he asked what I was doing and if I fancied taking a session,” says Shaun. 

One session of ‘passing, tackle technique and a bit of attacking’ later and he got offered a job. “I’ll be forever grateful to him for that,” he says.

Shaun’s only experience of union as a senior player had been when a star-studded Wigan destroyed all-comers at the Middlesex Sevens with a side featuring Jason Robinson, Martin Offiah and Henry Paul. Only one union player stood out for Shaun that day. “Wasps were the only team that weren’t intimidated by us,” he says. “And a lot of that was down to Laurence [Dallaglio] screaming in the tunnel and changing room, saying ‘let’s smash these rugby league…’ I just thought, ‘I like this guy’. He was trying to take me head off but I liked him.”

After a tough start to coaching life and, although noting a big difference in conditioning between union and league, Shaun was initially lacking the confidence to suggest significant changes, until Warren Gatland arrived, initially while Nigel was still with the club.

“It was lucky because Gats came over when Nigel was with the England B team, so it was just me and him coaching and we just seemed to get on,” he says. “Martin Offiah was at Wasps at the time and he said to me – and he’s pretty clued up is Chariots [of Fire, Offiah’s nickname] – ‘if you and Gatland work together I reckon you’d be pretty good, I’m telling ya, you’ve got something good here’.”

When Melville left for Gloucester, Shaun had a chance to see if Offiah’s prediction was right.

“When Gats came to Wasps, I wasn’t doing that well as a coach,” he admits. “I was new to the game, didn’t have much confidence because things weren’t going that great. 

“And Gats came in and said, ‘I want to change our defensive system, I want to do a blitz, hard-style defence’.  I said, ‘I’ve been thinking that for four months but I didn’t have the confidence to say it’.

“As a fit, young man, if I couldn’t fly up and stop that supply to outside, I’d throw my boots into the river. That’s the style of defence we wanted to bring in and now everyone defends like that. Gatland has done many great things, but what is there in rugby? There’s setpiece – so scrum and line; there’s attack; kicking game; and defence. He’s revolutionised one aspect of that. Well, him and Brendan Venter as well, who was at London Irish who were the other team that would do it in them days.”

A week after celebrating his 20th birthday, Billy-Joe Edwards was killed in a car crash along with his friend and team-mate Craig Johnson. 

“We had a game against London Irish that day and I was supposed to go on holiday after the game as we had a week off, I got a phone call from my mum at about eight in the morning saying what had happened.

“It was a life-changing event,” he says of the death of his brother, his only sibling and 16 years his junior, “he was a rugby player, he was probably better than me when I was a teenager. He was built like me dad, very powerful, and signed for Wigan Academy when he was 16. If he’d signed a bit younger, at 14, he’d have probably got more money, but league was going through some financial difficulties at the time.

“We were close, I’d lived in London for about six years by that time, but funny enough he rang me the night before. He wasn’t one for ringing, but he said, ‘you alright? Just ringing to see if you’re alright that’s all’ – that was a bit unusual, Billy giving me a ring. 

“Obviously everyone has losses in life, grandparents and parents. But as hard as it is, it’s in the right order. This was out of sync. It’s when it goes out of sync that it’s even more painful. 

“You never get over it,” he admits, “particularly my mum.”

Rugby kept Shaun going, even if, ironically, it led him to turn down the chance to coach his country. “What was good for me was having a job like at Wasps,” he says, “it kept you busy every day. I needed to be busy, busy, busy. 

“It was after this that the only solid contract I’d been offered with England came along, in 2006 with Andy Robinson. I was very appreciative of it, but it was too soon after my brother’s death. I’d just have had too much downtime. I spoke to my mum and said, ‘what do you think?’ and she said, ‘I don’t think you’re ready, mate, I think you need to keep busy every day – you don’t know what your mind can do to you’.”

On the pitch, things were clicking with Wasps. Months after the death of Billy, Wasps picked up the Premiership title and the Challenge Cup. The latter including an away win at Stade Francais that left such an impression on Fabien Galthie with Wasps’ suffocating defensive system that he would offer Shaun a job years later when in charge of Toulon.

“It was the unhappiest of times off the pitch with my brother’s passing, but coaching-wise, it was probably my happiest days in coaching really,” he says. “I was defence coach and backs coach, and I was an attack-minded player. The rugby kept me going to be honest.”

Wasps began to dominate rugby, taking four titles in six seasons, the Challenge Cup, two Heineken Cups and an Anglo-Welsh Cup. Even a change of director of rugby in 2005, after the first three league wins – from Gatland to McGeechan – failed to stymie the flow of silverware. They added the fourth title, the Anglo-Welsh cup win and second Heineken Cup coming during the McGeechan era. The constant was always Shaun. In his eyes, the Heineken Cup was everything. “To win a Heineken Cup is the toughest competition to win by a mile, nothing comes close to it,” he says, “except a world cup of course.

“The best single victory I’ve been involved in was against Leicester who were massive favourites and had obliterated Gloucester the week before in the play-off final. “I went for a drink with Lawrence [Dallaglio] on the Saturday after that play-off final and I said, ‘did you watch the game?’, he said, ‘I watched 15 minutes then took the dogs for a walk’, and then I knew we had a chance, because I knew we weren’t going bottle it like they had.”

Financial issues started to have an impact on Wasps as his time drew to a close. At one stage, almost forcing his hand. “I promised the lads they’d get so much money if we won,” he says, then racking his brains to remember which competition it was. “I tell you what it was, it was the Anglo-Welsh Cup when it was a major trophy in 2006. We’d get £450,000 for winning that back – and you got something like £50,000 for the Heineken Cup, ridiculously different. 

“I remember thinking I’d have to resign if we won, because it didn’t look like the money was going to be there. If I’d let down the players, and it cost them £10k each then I’d have to resign, wouldn’t I?”

He didn’t have to resign, but in 2011, with Dai Young set to take over at Wasps, it was time to move. “I felt he’d want a change,” says Shaun. “I was owed £300,000 and I took £30k, I was on £150,000 on a two-year deal. 

“Steve Hayes is a mate of mine,” he adds, before recalling another anecdote. “I’ll tell you a story,” he begins, “I was meeting Steve and it was a bit fractious, and I went home and found out Wasps had paid me by mistake – £6,000 – and they weren’t supposed to because I’d been with Wales. I’d just had a real fractious meeting with him as well and I thought ‘keep your dignity, so I rang him and told him’ he said, ‘thanks mate, keep it’.”

By this time, he was, of course, already working with Wales on a part-time basis, having been signed up by Gatland four years before, when he took the reins after a stint back home in New Zealand with Waikato. 

Back then, he’d also been offered a role with England Saxons. “It was pretty decent money,” he says of the role, “but it was only two games and the lure of Six Nations was big. I wanted to go on the Lions tour in 2009 and that was the only way I could do it, with international rugby.

“I wasn’t insulted that I was only offered Saxons, I was buzzing about it,” he says, as reports had swirled around that he should’ve been offered a different role with the senior team. “I was pleased I’d been offered it but obviously there was the Six Nations,” he repeats. 

It was only after consulting with Wasps’ England players and then being assured of the talent in Wales, that he said yes. “If they [the Wasps players] had said no, I wouldn’t have gone.”

The second bit of reassurance came from Gatland. “Gats said to me, ‘hey mate fancy coming to Wales?’, and I said, ‘what? They just got beat by Fiji, they just got knocked out of the world cup!’ He said, ‘mate, I’m telling you I’ve just been to Ospreys, they’re big, you won’t believe how big they are. We get them organised, we get them fit, they’ll be alright. Trust me’. I said, ‘okay boss, I’ll trust you’.” 

A year later, only a season after finishing joint bottom, Wales won the Grand Slam. England, as is often the case, were the instigators, with the opening day 26-19 victory at Twickenham setting them up for the title charge. “In the first half we realised that with the Welsh lads, if you ask them to do something, they’d try and do it exactly as you told them, they were very prescriptive,” he explains. “So if we said run the left side of the shoulder, they’d always do that. We were concerned that we’d try and play too much in our own half so we said we’d have to kick, but then all we did in the first half was kick.

“I said to them at half-time, ‘come on lads, I don’t think we’ve thrown a punch yet, get out there, express yourselves and play some rugby.”

At 16-6 down at half-time, Wales stormed back to win 26-19. “We beat England, in England, for the first time in 20 years and we went on to win the grand slam.

“It was all a bit of a new experience for me in Wales where everyone is watching you, it was a bit like being back in Wigan, but whereas we had 200,000 in Wigan, it was three million in Wales, it was incredible.

“I always remember we went into a restaurant on the Monday after the England game and everyone stood up and started clapping us, I just thought ‘how good is this?’” 

They’ve clapped a lot more since. Two more Six Nations Championships, a second Grand Slam.

A piece of British and Irish Lions 2009 stash is a most prized possession. “I don’t keep many things,” says Shaun, “but I’ve still got my Lions tracksuit top. I’ve given everything else away, but I won’t give that to anyone.”

Selected, along with Gatland, as part of Ian McGeechan’s 2009 Lions coaching team, Shaun achieved the goal he set out when moving to Wales. The Lions lost the series 2-1 which included the memorable – if brutal – second Test in Pretoria, where the ravaged Lions went down 28-25 with the final kick of the game. “That was the best experience but most painful too,” he says, “because we played probably the greatest South African team ever – the team Richie McCaw said was the greatest team he’d played against – and we were within a hair’s breadth of beating them.

“That was one of the worst dressing rooms I’ve ever been in my life,” he says. “When you see Simon Shaw, who is a tough man, welling up when he’s doing the interview, you know what it meant to the players and what they’ve been through mentally, it was like a war zone. To pick themselves up the week after by a record score shows what a great bunch of lads they were.”

Stories come thick and fast with Shaun, as if the removal of one file from the memory banks, accidently nudges another loose at the same time. It’s why, when we start talking about dealing with pressure, he recalls being in the tunnel at Wembley as an 18-year-old with Wigan. “The other side has this real tough lad, and our star player tried to say hello to him, and he responded, ‘I’m going to break your fucking jaw’. I was like, ‘oh my God, this is for real’. 

“When I was 19, I was becoming a man and I went in there thinking, ‘this is your turn’, all you bastards who’ve been beating me up are going to get some back.”

Conversation then flits to team talks. “I still remember Lawrence Dallaglio’s team talks – they were unbelievable. Me and Paul [Stridgeon] always had to go out of the dressing room, because there’d be tears coming down your face – you’d be so pumped up.”

Players he’s coached are on the list too. “One of the best players I ever coached was Tom Rees,” he says. “I remember when Sam Warburton was playing and getting a bit of stick, and I said to him, ‘of all the players I’ve coached, you’re in my all-time team at no.7 – but only just, because I’ve coached Tom Rees!’ Everybody forgets about him and how good he was, but people that know rugby, know how good he was. 

“One of my proudest days from coaching was when he sent me a text saying that things I’d said to him had inspired him and that I’d helped him become a doctor.”

We talk also of the breakdown, and how he’s dedicated so much more time to it in the recent years, stating how ‘only Saracens really understand the breakdown in the Premiership – that’s why they’re so good’. Such is the extent of his work in the area, that he even thinks it could help should he return to union. “If I did return to England to a Wasps or whatever, that’s the big advantage I’d have, my coaching would be a lot more confident because of the work I’ve done on the breakdown,” he says. “The only thing there’s more of [than breakdowns] in rugby is passes, that’s why this year we’ve been lucky enough to be the best defence in the world, which is probably my best achievement. 

“It’s alright winning the Six Nations, but they always say, yeah, but you’re not as good as the All Blacks are you? But this year our defence has been the No.1 in the world, and we were No.2 last year, so we must be doing something right.”

His Wales career comes to an end this year, with the Rugby World Cup the swansong for both him and Gatland. He’ll be moving back to Wigan to take over at his first love, Wigan Warriors. Why Wigan? “I think it was the fact Wigan wanted me, and showed that they really wanted to me go there,” he says. “To be honest Wales didn’t, but I’ve done 12 years which is a pretty decent stint.

“It’ll be a transition again,” he admits. “I’ll always have the intention of coming back to union.”

Why? “The Six Nations,” he says, simply. “It’s just after Christmas, everybody’s a bit miserable, and then it comes along, it’s just brilliant. It’s like five Wembley finals on the bounce. 

“I think I’m an international-level coach,” he continues, “so maybe I’ll come back and…”

He leaves it hanging, before finishing. “Well, you never know what’s in the future.”  

Words by: Alex Mead

Pictures by: Colin Bell

This article was taken from issue 5 of Rugby.
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