The late 1980s must have been a frightening time to be an international rugby player. Indeed, it was a frightening time to be a rugby player at all, as you didn't have to be on the same field as Wayne 'Buck' Shelford to be terrified of him. You didn't even have to be in the same country.
While Shelford was terrorising the rugby plains of New Zealand as the No 8, captain and terminator of the invincible All Blacks of the time, there were children the other side of the world cowering beneath posters of him, listening aghast to tales of his legend. Snapshots abounded of a man covered in blood, flying through the air like some dread angel of death, swooping on helpless international rugby players. 'Hurry up at the back!' the schoolmasters would shout on the training field. 'Or Buck will get you!' The nights were dark and sleepless back then.
If Saracens were particularly keen to replace François Pienaar, their departing coach last season, with a man of similar reputation, there really were only a handful of people they could have turned to - and Buck Shelford was one. His record as an international captain is as proud as Pienaar's. A few months after he had helped New Zealand to the 1987 World Cup, he assumed the captaincy, and proceeded to lead the All Blacks through one of their great periods of domination. They never lost a game in the three years he held the post.
He played 48 games for New Zealand, 22 of which were Test matches. He lost just one - the infamous Battle of Nantes in 1986 against France. It was his second Test, and he played most of the match with a testicle hanging out of his scrotum, worked free by an aggressive French stud in the 20th minute. We can probably forgive him that one.
It is little wonder he inspired awe among opponents and schoolchildren alike, and little wonder that for the hard folk of New Zealand he ranks as highly as any other All Black. He eventually lost his place when he was suddenly and controversially dropped and replaced by Zinzan Brooke in 1990. Brooke went on to be the great No 8 of the past decade, but he was just a bit too flash, a bit too pretty for the very hardest of the Kiwi brethren. For these people, Shelford stands alongside Colin Meads as their ultimate hero.
As with Pienaar in South Africa, there was national outrage when Shelford was dropped, and a 'bring back Buck' campaign was started. It failed and Shelford moved to Northampton, where he played for three years in the early 1990s. And now, like Pienaar and Brooke before him, he is trying his luck as a coach in London. But, unlike Pienaar and Brooke, Shelford, at 44, has the advantage of a few years' coaching experience behind him, first in Rome, then for the past four years at North Harbour, his province as a player in New Zealand.
Saracens' owner Nigel Wray is untroubled by parallels between his outgoing and incoming coaches. 'I think François will be a great coach, but it just didn't work with us. I don't think there's any sense of déjà vu. They're both their own men, and they're both completely different people. The proof will be in the pudding. But already the players seem to be responding to Wayne. I'm much more optimistic than I was this time last year.'
As in previous pre-seasons, there are plenty of grounds for optimism at Saracens, who still retain as powerful a squad as any in the Premiership. The question is whether Shelford can mobilise the talent. He does not feel disposed to comment on any previous problems at the club, but he does speak with the matter-of-fact optimism of a man with a new venture. 'Some of the players tell me,' he says, 'that there have been more smiles and more enthusiasm in the past month than in the past couple of years.'
If that is an oblique reference to a regime under Pienaar that had grown joyless with the grind of underachievement, no one should be under the illusion that life under Buck will be a holiday camp.
When Shelford took over the captaincy of the All Blacks, the first thing he did was to take the team to a Maori college to show them what the haka truly meant. Until then the All Black pre-kick-off version of the war cry had been little more than a chance to stretch the coach journey from the players' limbs. Shelford transformed it into the heavens-invoking war dance that it is today. His very purpose, it seems, is to imbue those around him with the passion of ages that comes from a knowledge of their roots.
'If you don't know what something's about,' he says with chilling intensity, 'why do it? The haka is very symbolic to my culture. Now, I don't have that culture here, so I need to translate it to a rugby environment. If you want to play rugby, learn your game. If not, then get out while you're ahead. Or you'll be thrown out by the coach.'
He laughs as he says that last line, but there is little doubting the ferocity of intention behind it. As for the Saracens players, they know by now that, if in the months ahead they are anything less than true to themselves and their new coach, some dark and sleepless nights await.
