MIKE PHILLIPS ON WALES v FRANCE
NEXT Saturday Shaun Edwards will be back at the Principality Stadium but this time he’ll be coaching against Wales.
I’m sure it will be a strange experience for France’s new defence coach and it might be a bit strange for the Welsh players as well.
Shaun coached me for seven years and had an immediate impact when he came into camp with Warren Gatland in 2008.
Rowland Phillips was our defence coach before Shaun came in and he was a completely different character.
When he arrived, he’d already achieved a great deal of success as a player and a coach. So straight away, he had the boys’ attention and respect.
There was no ‘off’ button with Shaun. Everyone was a little bit wary of him because he always had his game face on. To use acting parlance, he was always in character.
He was on it nonstop, which is what you have to be in international rugby.
Shaun brought immense amounts of high quality training and he expected the highest standards of the boys.
He could be brutal, too. Mark Jones got dropped once for going down injured in a game against England. Shaun was annoyed with him because a few minutes later he’d run it off.
The mantra was that you’re only allowed to stay down injured if your leg is hanging off. In fact, if one leg was hanging off, you could stand up on the other one and get in the line.
That’s what Shaun was like. Those were the little things that meant so much.
Boys realised that there was no hiding place, like there was before.
Every little detail was looked at and standards went up.
Personally, we had a great relationship.
He always picked his defensive player of the game and he gave me the bottle of champagne after the England game in 2008. So we got off to a good start!
He liked my physicality, my workrate in defence and how much I liked to put it about.
In the same year against Ireland, I got a daft yellow card just before half time and I thought I was finished. I was sat in the dressing room at the break, nobody was talking to me.
Then Shaun came over and gave me some encouragement telling me to just be myself and don’t force anything when I went back on.
I was so relieved because I thought I was gone.
He used to say before games that our aggression would come from our No.9 and he used to put a lot of pressure on me.
He used to get me fired up and he’d always try to spark a reaction from me but I had massive respect for Shaun.
In that same game, I got out of position and the first thing that came into my head was ‘Shaun’s going to go nuts’.
I should have been on the short side of a lineout and, well, I wasn’t.
Shane Horgan made a charge for the line in the area I was supposed to be defending but I got back just in time to make a tackle and stop him scoring.
My pal Shane Williams came across and tried to claim it as his tackle and take all the glory as usual, but it was all me.
You could see how much Shaun cared and how much it meant to him. You just don’t want to let people like that down.
He was completely honest with players and he was just himself.
I’ve come across a lot of coaches and there is a lot of falseness in the world we live in now.
Shaun was a straight-shooter and never pretended to be somebody he wasn’t. As players, you respect that.
Every time I was injured, he’d be on the phone checking in or giving me positive feedback. Nobody else did that. Those little things go a long way.
I know it’s professional rugby but everybody needs a pat on the back from time to time.
But, at the top level, you also need to be told if you’re not doing the right things as well.
Shaun is very critical. After games he would write up on a board exactly what everyone’s positive and negatives were.
He’d openly tell me if I wasn’t performing but he’d do it the right way. Some coaches just want to scream and shout but Shaun genuinely cared.
Away from the training pitch, he’s a pretty quiet bloke around the hotel, he keeps himself to himself a bit but he watches endless amounts of rugby.
He’s a complete, ultimate winner. Look at his record, he’s won so many trophies. He’s so intense, like Alun Wyn Jones in many ways.
I’ve got massive respect for him and he’s a top guy. It will be interesting to see how Wales go against a Shaun Edwards defence next weekend.
After the Ireland game, it was hard not to notice the stick that George North was getting. It’s tough as a player when you get that sort of criticism.
It’s important to remember that every player that has represented Wales will have received criticism at one time or another. It comes with the territory.
It’s very easy to just say to somebody ‘don’t read it’ but the way the world is now with social media, the critics are in your face. You can’t escape it sometimes.
Even though the people around you, your family and friends, try to be caring and supportive, sometimes one of them might say: ‘Oh, I can’t believe so and so said that about you’.
It will always come to your attention, it’s hard to get away from it, especially in Wales.
I remember walking into my house, there was a couple walking past and the guy shouts up: ‘When are you going to start winning games?’
We’d just won two in a row! It baffled me.
You need to have that tunnel vision and maintain massive belief in yourself and your own ability.
That’s why the best are the best. It’s not so much your talent, it’s your mindset and what goes on upstairs.
You’ve got to have a bit of a care free attitude at times. That’s a skill in itself. It’s probably the most important thing but it doesn’t really get coached at all.
In the last few years, we’ve seen massive strides in terms of recovery and weight programmes but the main thing in any sport is the top two inches.
That positive mindset is so important.
I hope George can silence the critics against France and get back to playing some of his best rugby because when he’s on form, he’s a huge weapon for Wales.