Twenty minutes in and 24-3 down

NEWSLETTER 01 | 14 September 2026

Ellis Park, 9 June 2018

In late May 2018 the side that's now the world's champion rugby team was ranked sixth in the world, and the newspapers were running pictures of fans burning jerseys in protest. Rassie Erasmus had been head coach for about three months, and he'd spent them selling the squad one defensive pattern. His first home Test in charge was at Ellis Park on 9 June, against England. Siya Kolisi was made captain for the day, and two new wingers, S'busiso Nkosi and Aphiwe Dyantyi, were on debut. England scored three tries in fourteen minutes. Inside twenty minutes it was 24-3. I was in the stands that day with my brother-in-law Shaun, and the ground went silent.

Kolisi was twenty minutes into his captaincy, the wingers were twenty minutes into their Test careers, and the team on the field was the one Rassie had been hired to fix. Then Jacques Nienaber came on the radio from the coaching box and asked whether they should switch defensive systems. The pattern that had just leaked three tries was the one the squad had spent three months being sold, and going back to what the players had done their whole rugby lives would have cost him their trust. Rassie said no. The plan would hold. The message back to Kolisi was, go harder.

Then the players answered. In the twenty-first minute Faf de Klerk slipped through a missed tackle and scored under the posts. Three more tries came before half-time, the squad held the plan through the second half, and Handré Pollard's boot did the rest. They won 42-39. Rassie has written what he told the players in the change room. "Guys, you've bought yourself three more Test matches. I could now afford to be consistent with my team."

What to take from the story

Rassie's words put the credit where it sat. The players had bought the next three Tests, for a plan they'd spent three months making their own, and the coach's part was to refuse to take it back from them at the first bad result. That's the idea to take from the story if you're building a team and rugby leaves you cold. A new way of working is most likely to be abandoned at its first bad result, and the first bad result usually arrives before there's enough evidence to judge whether the new way works. Fourteen bad minutes told everyone at Ellis Park what had happened in fourteen minutes, and nothing about whether the plan was right. The discipline the book takes from that afternoon is one most planning frameworks skip. Decide together, before the first bad result, what you'll refuse to let pull you off the plan, and how long the plan has to run before you judge it. Holding the plan and learning from the result are two different things. The same team reviews every match the same way, win or lose, and adjusts the details; it's the way of working that gets the time it was promised. 

The whole afternoon, and the longer plan the squad was building toward that day, is in Chapter 3. The book's at paulsteenkamp.com/books. 

The weather this week

Most teams I meet have recently changed something about how they work, and the change hasn't had time to prove itself yet. It might be a new way of running the weekly meeting, or a tool that arrived mid-quarter. In those teams the first bad result arrives before the new way has had a fair run, and that's the moment when going back to the old way feels easiest. The teams that come through it decided in advance how long they'd give the new plan before judging it, and told everyone the date.

Monday Morning 

One question to take to your team this week. What have you recently changed about how the team works that your people are quietly waiting for you to abandon at the first bad result?

One small brave thing: Pick that one change. This week, agree with the team, out loud, how long the new way gets before you judge it together, and put the date where everyone can see it.