It is preseason training. He is bouncing around, barking orders, snarling at an international’s error and cheering on an academy youngster. Shaun Edwards is the enthusiastic new kid and the grizzled old pro wrapped into one.

His players love him enough to understand why there are times when they are going to loathe him. The league man in love with union; the Englishman coaching Wales; the winner scared stiff of losing; the former player who is still desperate for selection; an emotional person and an intellectual rugby thinker. Not so much a series of paradoxes as a complete rugby man.

And a rugby man with an enormous burden of expectation falling on his shoulders from all angles. He and Wasps expect nothing but success; Wales have a Grand Slam to defend; and at the end of the season it is “the big one”, as Edwards reverentially calls the Lions tour to South Africa. “Like 25,000 coaches the length and breadth of Ireland and Great Britain, I would love to be on that Lions tour.”

The Lions are his long-term objective, his personal pilgrimage, his rugby Lourdes, but the winner in him doesn’t dwell on the season’s far shores. From his office at the Wasps training ground at Acton, west London, all he sees in front of him are Wasps. The start of the Premiership is a week away and his club face London Irish on the first-day double-header at Twicken-ham with all the pressure of defending the title. Well, not exactly pressure. Not quite.

“We don’t feel it as pressure as the season nears. Since we beat Leicester [in the Guinness Premiership Final in May] there has been the same emotion we had at Wigan, a feeling of relief that you didn’t fail.” Here he grins, sighing deeply. “It was a matter of relief and knowing you can wake up tomorrow morning with a clear head. You can sleep well again for 2½ months before panicking again. It is the fear of failure that drives you on. All great teams have it.”

Wasps, like Wigan, have been blessed with “a group of senior players who set the standards. The conditioning side is one angle, but mostly it is that element of competition. Often champions are just the ones who most hate to lose. It can be that simple. Gnarly bastards who are grumpy when they lose and can’t wait for the next game to make amends”.

Some will be stunned to hear him talk in the same breath of the mental toughness of Wigan’s working-class men and Wasps’ posh public schoolboys, but Edwards is too smart and honest to be held back by any lingering class conflict that still charges relations between the codes.

“Some of the toughest lads come from so-called privileged backgrounds. I remember Fraser Waters telling me his life story and how he went to boarding school at an early age. How scary must it be having to leave home at the age of 11 or earlier? I really did have a privileged background because I stayed with my mum until I was 19 or 20. These boarding school lads have to grow up young and fend for themselves in an environment where other lads are older than themselves,” he says.

“I don’t go for that stuff that someone’s tougher because he comes from a rough rather than a nice area. It is what is in the mind. No matter how much money your mum and dad have got, it’s what comes from within, not the external environment.”

Class distinctions concern him a great deal less as a man than the constant stream of free kicks that have blighted the Tri Nations do as a coach. “There is no structure whatsoever, no build-up of pressure. Without intending to be condescending, it is like basketball. Some say it is like rugby league, but it is not, because league too is a build-up of pressure. I love seeing pressure building; you see teams with different game plans, contrasting styles, like Wasps, Bath and Sale. Bring in this free kick rule, the pressure is released and we end up with all the teams looking and playing the same.”

Fortunately the clubs held firm against the tide of rule changes and the free kick will not scar the game in the northern hemisphere. Of the Experimental Law Variations that will be implemented, only one causes him major concern – the freedom to pull down a maul. From someone who played league until 2000, his esteem for the maul could be seen as the completion of his Pauline conversion to the vagaries of the 15-aside code.

“Even if the southern hemisphere teams do not think so – particularly Australia – the maul is an incredibly difficult thing to set up. It opens the field, as teams have to commit numbers to stop it, and then you end up with backs versus backs. Pull it down, and fewer defenders need be committed, which makes life easier for those of us who are defensive coaches, but surely the rules are meant to be opening the game up.”

His name has been made as a defensive coach, but his influence at Wasps is increasingly profound in attack. “If I am honest, I like coaching attack lots more than I like coaching defence,” says Edwards. The superb running lines, passing and angles of support displayed at times last season by Wasps are the hallmarks of a coach who is confident enough of his own and of his team’s abilities not to embrace the newfangled just for its own sake.

Watching Edwards’s basic attack and core skill drills is like being transported back 15 years. Themes come and go, but the basics remain the same. In a league where so many players have forgotten the art of running and passing, Wasps’ determination to base their game on fundamentals is the not especially remarkable or secret essence of their success, together with the will of those “gnarly bastards”.

With Wales, Edwards’s responsibilities are purely defensive. He describes himself as a hired hand, riding into town to deal with the problems. The other five nations were blown away and Edwards was back to Wasps, pride in the performance, money in the bank. “Whatever players Gats [Warren Gatland] gives me to work with, I work with them,” he says. “I come into Wales and try to stop the opponents scoring. That’s it.”

Asked about Welsh objectives, Edwards is fired up for the autumn international series. “I am already counting the days to the first match against South Africa. So far during our tenure in Wales we have had one poor performance: we were woeful in last summer’s first Test in Bloemfontein. We were crap, but I was delighted with the players’ response. I know there is not much to do in Bloemfontein, but some of the lads were in the team room at 7.30 the next morning looking at the game because they were so disappointed with their performances. That showed we are dealing with real competitors.”

We chat about lessons learnt from the Wales tour of South Africa. Without pausing for thought, Edwards’s mind races ahead to “the big one”.

In his mind, international coaching and the Lions are linked inexorably. “I will be disappointed if I don’t get the Lions. It was one of the reasons why I was desperate to coach international rugby. I didn’t go on the last Lions tour because I was not selected. In my own head I had an excuse – I hadn’t done international rugby. If I don’t get selected this time, it will be because I’m not good enough.”

That competitive streak burns with the same flaming force as the enthusiasm on the training field. The pain of the rare axe suffered in his league days fuels him and his coaching tenets.

“I hated getting dropped. Coaches would try to mollycoddle me by saying, ‘Oh, Shaun, we are just trying someone else this week’. I’d prefer, ‘Shaun, you haven’t scored for six weeks, you missed four tackles last week, you’re not playing well enough; you’re dropped’. I’ll think, ‘Okay, study the video, yes I haven’t scored for six weeks, but I’ll be scoring the next few weeks and trying my hardest to rectify my mistakes’.”

He didn’t need to say it, but the essence of Edwards was uncorked and in overflow as Wasps’ afternoon session neared. “That’s how I coach.”

Edwards only ever wanted it told as the coach thought it was. That lesson has made its way south as the league player metamorphosed into union coach. “If they cannot handle honesty, will they be able to handle the pressure of a grand final?”

The question is purely rhetorical, but the excitement as the season approaches is genuine and it’s infectious. We haven’t even discussed the Heineken Cup. “I love it. It’s awesome – teams like Toulouse, Biarritz, Leinster, Munster. That knockout stage is where club rugby almost rivals football with the stadiums and crowds. Toulouse move to their 38,000 football stadium, everyone going potty. It is awesome, I am getting goose bumps just thinking about it. There’s something magic about the name Toulouse.”

Edwards gets a knock on the door; an end to our reveries and the stuff of dreams; Toulouse and South Africa can wait; it is time for training. He’s straight back into work mode, cajoling, abusing, joking and ever demanding; of himself and his Wasps. He might have been describing himself when he spoke of those “gnarly bastards”, but this hard man is an unmistakeable soft touch seduced by the old-fashioned wiles and guiles of rugby union.

Born winner

THE PLAYER

1983: Regal Trophy (Wigan) 1985: Challenge Cup (Wigan) 1986: Charity Shield, Regal Trophy and Lancashire Cup (Wigan) 1987: Championship title, Regal Trophy and Lancashire Cup (Wigan) 1988: Challenge Cup, World Club Challenge Cup, Charity Shield and Lancashire Cup (Wigan) 1989: Challenge Cup, Regal Trophy and Lancashire Cup (Wigan) 1990: Championship title, Challenge Cup and Regal Trophy (Wigan) 1991: Championship title and Challenge Cup (Wigan) 1992: Championship title, Challenge Cup, World ClubChallenge Cupand Charity Shield (Wigan) 1993: Championship title, Challenge Cup, Regal Trophy and Lancashire Cup (Wigan) 1994: Championship title, Challenge Cup and World Club Challenge Cup (Wigan) 1995: Championship title, Challenge Cup and Regal Trophy (Wigan) 1996: Charity Shield and Regal Trophy (Wigan)

THE COACH

2003: Premiership title and European Shield (Wasps) 2004: Premiership title and Heineken Cup (Wasps) 2005: Premiership title (Wasps) 2006: Anglo-Welsh Powergen Cup (Wasps) 2007: Heineken Cup (Wasps) 2008: Premiership title (Wasps) and Six Nations Grand Slam (Wales)