Shaun Edwards spent 11 years as Wales’ defensive guru playing a huge part in the success during the Warren Gatland era.
Now he's bringing his expertise to bear with France who he has helped transform into a well-oiled Grand Slam-chasing unit, with their next stop being Cardiff.
So what is it like to play under Edwards? Just how does he go about his job and what makes him so good at it?
Here are the testimonies from some of the men who have experienced his unique ways over the years.
Jonathan Thomas
“There is a little bit of mystery around Shaun that fascinates people.
“Sometimes people think it’s all blood and thunder with him.
“But, actually, he’s a lot more intelligent than perhaps people give him credit for.
“He goes round with an angry face, but he’s a very deep thinker on the game.
“People just think it’s Shaun the aggressor and the intimidation, but there’s a lot more going on than people give him credit for.
“When you have a conversation with him, he’s got unbelievable knowledge of the game, whether that’s the laws, the history of the sport or the coaching side of it.”
The 67-cap former back row continues: “His first quality is simplicity.
“As a coach myself, the ability to keep your message really simple is actually a lot more difficult than people realise and Shaun has mastered it, he really has.
“To defend well, you don’t want to have loads of things going on in your head because that can cripple you sometimes.
“Coaches can over-complicate defence and get caught in paralysis by analysis, overthinking it.
“The way Shaun coaches is unbelievably simple. Being able to coach in a really simplistic way is actually quite an art and quite a skill. He has mastered his craft in that sense.
“He has got really simple messages, simple drills, really clear expectations and players buy into it. If you don’t buy into it, then you understand what the consequences are.
“What Shaun does is he instils a mentality because he was a winner himself, a very decorated player.
“He instils a mindset to have great energy and appetite to defend for 80 minutes.
“It’s not doing it for 40 minutes or making ten good tackles and then missing three tackles. It’s an absolute no-nonsense mindset that if you want to play in this team, these are the expectations. It’s non-negotiable. You have to be relentless at it.
“A lot of people get caught up with the tactical and technical side of the game, but the reality is the game of rugby is about attitude.
“Shaun is not just a coach, he is more like a mentor. It’s more leadership and mentality than it is actually coaching sometimes. He earns instant respect.
“He sets the tone immediately and you want to do it for him.”
Adam Jones
In his autobiography Bomb, former Lions prop Jones vividly recalled how Edwards introduced himself to the Welsh players back in 2008.
“‘We’re a blitzing team. And if you don’t like it, you can f*** off’.
“I’m paraphrasing, but those were more or less Shaun Edwards’ first words to the Welsh squad.
“He was a rugby league legend and most of the boys were excited about working with him. The rest were terrified. He is a terrifying man.
“As he sat there, scowling at us, we all silently consented. There was to be no dissent under Shaun Edwards.”
Lawrence Dallaglio
“He once broke into my house and sat waiting for my arrival home to discuss my performance the previous Saturday for Wasps!
“We had a 10 minute chat and then he got up and left. Just an average day. It was a relationship like no other I’ve ever experienced.
“He’s my brother like no other and a serial winner.”
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Jamie Roberts
“You would come in on a Monday morning with Wales and Shaun would have a projector with a big screen in the middle of the team meeting room, with numbers 1 to 23 and a sentence about what he thought about your defensive performance.
“It was basically: No 1 - Great effort pal, dominant hits; No 2 - What the f*** was that on minute 23; No 3 - Solid line-speed, keep it going.
“All your team-mates would see what he thought of you. I thought that was quite powerful.
“Shaun is a very honest guy. He’ll tell you when you’ve messed up and he’ll praise you if you do well.
“He had a ‘defender of the week’ award and he’d buy a bottle of champagne during Test matches for the guy who had impressed most in defence.
“He did that all the way through his time with Wales. I remember the 2013 Six Nations campaign where we didn’t concede a try for four games. I was defensive captain at the time and in the last match we beat England 30-3.
“He came up to me the morning after the game with a bottle of Dom Perignon and a photo of the both of us from the changing room from the day before. He’d signed it.
“It was an amazing thing to receive from a guy I had so much respect for. He didn’t have to do that, but he went out of his way.”
Taulupe Faletau
“I remember the first session with him. I thought he was a scary man and I didn’t want to get anything wrong. Looking back on it, I think he was being scary for a good reason.
“In training, you see a different person to the one off the field. You wonder if it is the same person.
“He was really good at getting what he wanted out of his sessions and drills and I guess his scary appearance was a part of that.
“Working with him was great and he is doing a fantastic job with France.”
Alun Wyn Jones
In his recently published autobiography Belonging, Wales and Lions captain Jones talks about his first encounter with Edwards, the man with “the glowing eyes”.
“You looked at him and thought, if someone says the wrong thing here, it’s going to get ugly.
“The Edwards mantra was straightforward.
‘Legalized violence’. Those were his first two words. Then the explanation. ‘Defence isn’t about technique. It’s legalized violence’.
“It hit home. No smiles, no chuckles, me with wide eyes, ‘S**t, he’s serious...’
“You realised in those first few minutes that he wasn’t afraid of putting it all out there. total honesty, no room for misconceptions or mistakes.”
James Hook
“Shaun is a really intelligent coach who gets his points across in a very clear, precise way.
“In a game where sometimes things can be made more complicated than they need to be, he is decisive in terms of how he wants his players to play and there was never any grey areas or confusion leading into an international with him.
“He had the fear factor in his coaching, which I don’t think is a bad thing, especially when you’re coaching defence.
“If you had a poor game, he would let you know in no uncertain terms. But if you had a good game, he would reward you and showed his appreciation for your efforts.
“I’m sure different players will have different opinions on Shaun, but whatever your opinion on him was, everyone seemed to respect him for the way he got all of the team playing for him.
“If you’ve been coached by Shaun Edwards, you’re almost certainly going to become a better defender, with a few bollockings off him along the way!”
Gethin Jenkins
The former Lions prop is the man now in the shoes Edwards once filled as Wales defence coach and he acknowledges he learned a lot from working under him.
“You’d do something on a Monday or Tuesday and you probably wouldn’t realise you are doing it. Then, on a Saturday, you’d come up against it,” he said.
“In terms of the mental side, less was more with him. He’d get up in a meeting, he wouldn’t say a lot, but it would mean a lot.
“Shaun has been coaching for a long time. He’s been involved in a lot of environments, a lot of tough international games and you can see his imprint coming through.
“You can’t take away from what he has done, and he continues to be successful with it.
“There is definitely a lot of stuff I’ve soaked up off him over the years.”
Lee Byrne
Former full-back Byrne has clear memories of the first game he played under Edwards.
It was against England at Twickenham in 2008 and Wales were losing 16-6 at half-time.
“Shaun was just so passionate. He was saying ‘you have got them here boys’.
“It was the first time we’d been in that situation with him and you could just see what he was like then. It was all about belief with him.
“I just think it’s his passion when he talks. You can see he’s an emotional guy and he brings that emotion out of players.
“In previous years, ten points down away from home, we would probably have folded in the second half.
“It would have been a case of get it over with, get on the bus, get home and another loss at Twickenham.
“But it was a different mentality this time. It was calm, but emotional and passionate too. You could see then what a great double act Warren and Shaun were.
“They gave us the belief that we could go on and win the game. Before, we would have held back and just tried to keep the score down. But not this time.”
Wales won 26-19 to take the first step on the road to the Grand Slam.
Dan Biggar
“A lot of people say they’re intimidated by Shaun… and he’s quite scary. He scared me quite a few times.
“You don’t really want to mess about in training or make many mistakes because he’s not the type to pull you to the side and have a quiet word with you. He’ll let rip on the training field or in the changing room.
“He was a huge influence on the Welsh team in terms of his determination to win, attention to detail, his motivational skills. He’s superb.”
Andrew Coombs
“He’s the only coach to physically smash tackle me repeatedly over a breakfast table on a Monday morning due to missing a tackle.
“The rest of the squad were p**sing themselves laughing with their heads in their breakfasts.”
Shane Williams
“In training, some sessions were tougher than games. We used to call them BOB sessions – bone on bone - and they were more physical than games because in a game I would be standing away from the mauls and the breakdown.
“Sometimes you would do two or three of those sessions in a week.
“I remember when I was in the Wales team, after those BOB sessions, Shaun Edwards would take me to the side and have people like Jamie Roberts and Tom Shanklin to run at me for half an hour. And if there was no one else to do it, he would run at me himself, flat out!”
Sam Warburton
“Shaun has his own way of coaching tackling,” explains Warburton in his book Refuse To Be Denied.
“He would especially encourage us to keep our hands up and tight to our body before throwing a shoulder at the last second at the man to be tackled.
“He taught me so much about defensive play.
“When I first played for Wales, I was incredibly naive about what real defence meant.
“Shaun worked hard with me to explain defensive structures, always taking me aside after games and showing me what I could have done better.”
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