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The 'pin drop moment' Shaun Edwards was introduced to Wales
By Ian Cameron
Alun Wyn Jones has revealed how a single declaration from Shaun Edwards caused what he calls a “pin-drop moment” during Wales’s revival under Warren Gatland.
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Jones, who retired in 2023, pulled back the curtain on the demanding mindset that helped him become one of the game’s most respected figures in a wide-ranging interview with the High Performance Podcast.
The former Wales captain spoke at length about his fear of complacency and the influence of Warren Gatland and Shaun Edwards. Jones – who holds the world record for rugby caps – says Edwards arrived with an uncompromising philosophy that immediately set the tone for future success, reliving Edwards’ introduction to the side.
“We came in and we’re like, ‘Gats had done his talk, okay, yeah, pretty switched on.’ Then Shaun comes in and says: ‘Defence is about two things: legalized violence.’ It was a pin drop moment and everyone was like, ‘Okay, we know where we’re going with this,’ and it was meeting one, minute one, stall set.
“With his character and demeanor, Shaun cares a lot about what he does, and I think ultimately he said: ‘I need to prepare you the best I can. If I could do it for you, I’d be out there with you.’ That was the stall set from day one.”
While the current Welsh squad are currently navigating the worst run of losses in their history, under Gatland’s first tenure he took the Welsh from a team that was pooled at the Rugby World Cup in 2007 under Gareth Jenkins to world No.1s by August of 2019.
Jones recalled how Gatland brought a clarity the team so desperately needed.
“Warren had the experience coming in, he’d done well with Wasps, Ireland… so I think he was the right person at the right time for the group of players that we had off the back of ’07 and obviously being knocked out of the Rugby World Cup.
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“It was night and day. That mentality that was brought in, from what we had and what we needed. We needed the clarity, it needed to be simple, like the game plan we had was relatively simple. It got us an element of success. Were we more expansive, potentially could have had more with the player group we had.
“You look what we achieved in that period of time, you know, going from an ’07 World Cup where we hadn’t got out of the pool stages, it was a huge difference. And it was stripped back: work hard, numbers high, decent kicking game and off we go. And, you marry that with Sean Edwards.”
Behind his own readiness to follow such a straightforward plan was a fear of ever getting too comfortable.
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“There’s no such thing as satisfaction,” Jones explained. “I wanted to win a World Cup, I wanted to win a European Cup, I never did that. But actually, if you can work harder than the next person, that is a talent. That is the ultimate talent because, you know, it gives you the ability to learn or work on anything.
“The question is, is it harder to do it in a region in Wales rather than go somewhere in France and do it? I don’t know. But I never did that. Those are the aims. Yeah, I probably could have gone to other teams and got closer to those things. We got close with Wales in the World Cups, but it was fear of complacency or being comfortable not having satisfaction, whichever way you look at it, I think, there’s always someone behind you. There’s always going to be someone bigger, faster, better.”
Jones said the key was never believing he had reached a final plateau. “If you think you’ve achieved it, you’re not high performance anymore. High performance doesn’t stop.”