Sarries' slow progress quickens Shelford's pulse

Mid-afternoon in midwinter, and a thick mist hangs peacefully over the Saracens training ground. Inside the clubhouse sits Wayne Shel-ford, showered and changed, and satisfied that his players have sweated out the excesses of the Christmas party the night before.

"The All Blacks used to have a big night after a Test match," he says. "The next day the guys would run it out of the system. No problem."

To encounter Shelford here, in the warmth and dry of his office, is like viewing a tornado through a telescope, or watching the Titanic submerge on a movie screen: you do not feel you are getting the full effect. Only those who have played with the former captain and No 8 of New Zealand – or now under him as Saracens coach – can appreciate the full effect. Whether it will be enough to emulate Sarries' all-too-brief high point in 1997-98 of finishing second in the league and winning the domestic cup remains to be seen. On Friday, the club announced the release of Craig Quinnell after only six months. The Wales lock had not been signed by Shelford, and was always felt to be on borrowed time.

Back in July, Shelford promised his new employers a top-three finish in the Premiership, and at least one trophy within the three-year term of his contract in succession to François Pienaar.

Now that the training field has turned from summer solidity to December squelch, has Shelford reset his sights? "I think a top-three finish is still achievable," he said. "We've got 10 more games in the Premiership, and six of them at home [starting this afternoon, against Leeds]. In the space of two wins you can move up four places. All the teams are up and down away from home, even Leicester and Gloucester." Almost to highlight the point, the Tigers lost at Wasps on Friday.

The bare facts are that Saracens have so far won five of their 12 Premiership matches, while progressing to the quarter-finals of both the Parker Pen and Powergen Cups. And, as Shelford reasons, this is not yet his team. "You can't build a team in a season," he said. "It's about putting the right system in place, a system that's so good and tough that the players either fit the system or they go."

To that end, Shelford is attempting a root-and-branch transformation in this leafy corner of north London. "The team are slowly but surely starting to realise they do have the potential," he said. "Last Sunday [in the home cup win against Sale] we played some very good rugby, some beautiful phases of play. We have some star players, but the thing for me is to make the team into the star. It's small steps, for very little gain, at the moment, but hopefully the team will grow into an area they haven't achieved for the last year or two. Possibly in the last two or three years they've just meandered along."

The set-up leaves plenty to be desired, says Shelford, compared with, say, a Super 12 side in New Zealand, or even Northampton or Leic-ester. "We're a split club," he said. "We train at one place, the offices are on one side of Watford, and the first team field is the other side of Watford. It's not conducive to working well together.

"I'm starting right down at the bottom," he continued, "at the academy level. We're setting our standards really high for what we want from an 18- or 19-year-old. If you're going to be a wimp, don't even bother trying to come in. The players have key performance indicators they must keep their own tabs on. Professionalism is getting paid to do a job. How well you do the job – that's the thing. Some guys walked into a contract five years ago, and because they were getting paid, they thought they were professional. It doesn't work like that.

"There are guys at this club – at every club – who want to take the pay cheque, but don't want to do the hard graft. About 30 per cent of players at clubs in this country would not make a Super 12 side. The basic skills here are average."

Saracens' board was reconstituted earlier this year to dissipate the financial burden felt by their owner, Nigel Wray. A new chief executive, Mark Sinderberry of the ACT Brumbies, is due in February. Shelford, having coached only Roma and North Harbour in the past, is a coach in the making. The return of Thomas Castaignède has been heartening, and the brilliant Frenchman recently assumed the fly-half's jersey from Andy Goode, but two other senior players, Tim Horan and Abdel Benazzi, are struggling to find their best form in what will be their final season. Similarly, Kyran Bracken, the England scrum-half, has regularly been usurped by the Canadian Morgan Williams.

Wray used to meet Pienaar and other members of staff every Monday morning, but that was before the former moved to Belgium for tax reasons. "The thing is," said Shelford, "I'm the coach. The board do their job, and I get on with the coaching. Of course they want cups; there are 12 clubs that want cups and championships. If we didn't win anything in the three years, I'd be disappointed. At the same time, if we were up in the top three in each year, I'd be pretty proud. Winning is not just trophies, it's watching young men develop skills, and develop as people. A club is made up of the players. Trophies can be hollow; here today, gone tomorrow."

Whenever Shelford finally goes, he intends to have left his mark.