The Captain Who Never Lost — And Was Dropped Anyway
Nantes, 1986. Twenty minutes into the second Test against France, a young number eight goes down at the bottom of a ruck, and a boot comes in hard.
Wayne Shelford, soon to be known to the whole rugby world as Buck, had his scrotum ripped open and lost FOUR teeth in that ruck. Most men would have been carried off. Shelford asked the physio to stitch him up, then jogged back onto the field.
A blow to the head left him concussed, and only then was he substituted. He watched the rest from the grandstand as the All Blacks lost 16–3. The match went down in history as the Battle of Nantes.
That is the story everybody tells about Buck Shelford. It is the story of a hard man, and it is true. But it is not the best of him.
Here is what almost nobody remembers. The man who bled in Nantes went on to change the way the All Blacks stood in front of the world.
Shelford had come to rugby by an unusual road. He joined the Royal New Zealand Navy as a physical training instructor, and he played for the Navy team before he played for his country. He made his Auckland debut in 1982, moved with his club to North Harbour when the union was formed in 1985, and was first picked for the All Blacks that same year.
When the 1987 World Cup arrived on home soil, he played in five of the six games and was in the team that beat France 29–9 in the final. Then he took over as captain, and what he did first had nothing to do with tactics.
He took his teammates to Te Aute College, a Māori school, and sat them down to watch the students perform a haka.
The All Blacks had performed the haka since the team’s earliest days. But Shelford believed they had done it with little understanding and little training. With the backing of former All Black Hika Reid, he insisted they learn it properly: the words, the actions, the tikanga behind them. The hardest part, by his own account, was bringing the European members of the team with him.
They did. The All Blacks performed Ka Mate for the first time in New Zealand at that 1987 World Cup. If you have ever felt the hair rise on your arms watching the haka before a Test, you are feeling something Buck Shelford helped build.
On the field, his captaincy was close to perfect. From 1987 to 1990 the All Blacks did not lose a single game under him. They drew once, against Australia in 1988, and that was all.
In 1990, the selectors decided he was no longer up to the standard, and he was dropped after the Scotland series. The country did not accept it quietly. The All Blacks lost the third Test of the next series against Australia, ending a run of 17 straight Test wins and 49 games unbeaten counting non-Tests.
Then the signs appeared at the grounds.
BRING BACK BUCK.
He never got the jersey back. What he said afterwards is the part that stays with you. He had “no hard feelings”, and he spoke with the selector, Alex Wyllie, who admitted a “few regrets” about the decision.
He finished with 48 games for the All Blacks, 22 of them Tests, and captained the side 31 times, 14 of them in Tests. He scored 22 tries along the way.
Then he simply carried on. In England he lifted a struggling Northampton side to their first Pilkington Cup final. He finished his playing days with Rugby Roma in 1995 and went on coaching at Saracens, Rugby Lions and North Harbour.
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