 |  |  |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |  |  |
 |  |  | |  |  |
 |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  |  |  |
 |  |  | |  |
Over six seasons, the burly former No 8, known throughout the game as 'Buck', had revived the fortunes of the North Harbour provincial side he helped to set up during the mid-1980s. But still there was no place for him at New Zealand rugby's high table.
The route to involvement with the All Blacks as a professional coach these days is via one of the country's five Super 12 provinces. And for Shelford, who made his living running a family hotel, the only option was Auckland. 'The New Zealand coaching set-up is very political and there were several guys ahead of me in the Auckland queue,' he said.
'The other problem is that being a Super 12 coach may be fully professional but it's not a full-time job - you're only working for about 15 weeks and you're not allowed to coach in the national provincial championship. By contrast, North Harbour were only paying me expenses for putting in 20-30 hours a week and our business was suffering.'
Shelford, now 45, clearly needed to break out of the straitjacket in which he found himself, especially as his success with North Harbour merely meant he was losing players on a regular basis to the Super 12 teams.
'It was then I decided to try for a coaching job overseas and I asked Murray Mexted (another former All Blacks No 8) if he knew of anything going in Europe. He put me on to Jamie Salmon (a former England centre who was also capped three times by New Zealand in 1981) who said he would see what he could do.
'I leased out the hotel and came over for a holiday in Italy. Then I had an interview with Saracens and we agreed a three-year contract. I dashed home again to sort everything out, but I was back in time for the start of the season.'
The move has certainly signalled a sea change for Shelford whose 22 caps between 1986-90 featured the inaugural World Cup win of 1987. But for Saracens, big spenders currently languishing in the lower echelons of the Premiership, the words 'culture shock' might be more appropriate.
'Saracens is a slumbering giant. There's a lot of ability here, but only a handful of players play to their potential. Seventy per cent of them come nowhere near,' said Shelford, whose previous experience of English club rugby was three seasons at Northampton in the early 1990s.
'They forget the finer points of catching, passing, tackling and going to ground with the ball, and their work rate is not good enough either. They might be internationals, in inverted commas, but only a handful of them would make a Super 12 team.
'Obviously people like Richard Hill, Timmy Horan, Kyran Bracken and Thomas Castaignede are exceptions to this and it's important to have guys like that at the club because they set a benchmark for the others.
"We've also had the experience of Francois Pienaar, Michael Lynagh, Philippe Sella and Thierry Lacroix here in recent seasons. But, especially among the backs, the others looked to these guys to run the play. If one of them went off injured, the rest didn't seem to know how to regroup.
'That's the main reason I brought my brother Darryl in from the Bradford Bulls' rugby league side in October - to coach the backs. Before he came, they were lost without Horan. Now they're much better organised.
With Saracens still in the hunt for a major European honour, Shelford is staying focused on the task ahead.
'THE PARKER PEN CHALLENGE CUP is an important part of the development of our players. After slipping into the bottom half of the table of late, the club needs to finish in the top-six so we can qualify for next year's Heineken Cup. The Parker Pen event is important to help raise our standards so that we can challenge for that top-six spot.'
This is an excerpt from an article by Paul Trow, taken from ERC's official magazine Rugby Europe. To read the rest of this article, click here
