Where did your team's last five hires come from? For most teams it's a short list of the same places, and nobody chose it on purpose. Kurt-Lee Arendse was packing pork sausages at a butchery in Paarl when Chester Williams found him, and in 2023 he played in the World Cup final. This week's newsletter is about finding people who sit outside the pipeline.

The Springboks lost 42-38 to the Wallabies in Perth yesterday, two weeks after winning a series against the All Blacks. They trailed 42-17 with fifteen minutes to go and finished four points short. This week's newsletter is about how to read a result. One result on its own tells you little, whether it's a win or a loss. It tells you more when you see the record around it.

Name three people, out loud, who were actually behind your last success, the ones the story usually leaves out. Tell them this week, specifically, what they did.

Down 24-3 to England twenty minutes into Rassie Erasmus's first home Test as Springbok coach, he refused to abandon the plan the squad had spent three months building. My first newsletter unpacks what that Ellis Park afternoon teaches about holding a new way of working through its first bad result.