Nicholas Watson

🚨NEW ARTICLE!🚨 SACHA, AND YOU I take a closer look at Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, and at our role in letting him be the best version of himself. “These moments can’t be seized by committee. They come and go so quickly they can only be claimed by sheer instinct." link in first comment

interesting Graham Henry saying that Super Rugby is not good enough preparation for playing Test rugby . saying NZ got the depth but maybe not enough "test ready" animals. then he make the point that All Blacks players need to be allowed to play overseas.. I think it is inevitable hey? and what will be interesting about that is the knock on effek to South Africa. the market will be flooded so LESS of our players will get slots in foreign clubs. so possibly we will retain more players locally if that happens.

I’m in love with this sentence: “Consistency is the silent engine of extraordinary results.”

Rugby people! Do stop in here. @SamLStandsUp leading the questioning with Joe Walsh. Our desire with @clubberrugby is to explain and understand more of rugby. Lift the lid on various things. This the first of many. Let us know what you think.

Ahead of a new podcast series coming in May, I came across this gem from Dr Mark O’Sullivan on nurturing young talent globally. @markstkhlm Are underage talent academies really the best way to produce elite athletes? #coaching #youthsports #parenting #fyp #sportsparents @GaelicSense @PlayerGaelic @YouthSportTrust @Coachdiary @CoachJonBeck @DRG_Coaching @coachingbadges @FAgeCoaching @CoachingManual

@will_owen9 allow players to be themselves, train like they play, principles before structure… many do the opposite 🤷‍♂️

“To be successful, you don't have to be special. You just have to be what most people aren't - consistent, determined and willing to work for it. No shortcuts." ~ Tom Brady

My favorite quote from Atomic Habits by James Clear: "It doesn't make sense to continue wanting something if you're not willing to do what it takes to get it. If you don't want to live the lifestyle, then release yourself from the desire. To crave the result but not the process is to guarantee disappointment."

Research on professional rugby players found that watching what they did wrong after a game led to elevated cortisol and worse performance the next game. Watching what they did well had the opposite effect, a bump in testosterone and better performance.

This guy literally explained why some people become successful while others stay average. The reason is uncomfortable. Game Theory Watch this:

Every time Jack Benade gets the ball you just hear the buzz of the crowd. Has to be one of the best young finishers in SA along with Jordan Steenkamp.

Tom Brady: "To be successful at anything, you don’t have to be special. You just have to be what most people aren’t: consistent, determined and willing to work for it. No shortcuts."

A MIT professor taught the same lecture every January for 40 years, and every single time it was standing room only. I watched it at 2am and it completely rewired how I think about communication. His name was Patrick Winston. The lecture is called "How to Speak." His opening line hit like a truck: your success in life will be determined largely by your ability to speak, your ability to write, and the quality of your ideas in that order. Not your GPA. Not your pedigree. Not your IQ. How you speak is what separates people who get heard from people who get ignored. Here's the framework he drilled into MIT students for four decades. He said never start with a joke. Start by telling people exactly what they're going to learn. Prime the pump before you pour anything in. He called it the "empowerment promise" give people a reason to stay in their seats within the first 60 seconds. Then he broke down the 5S rule for making ideas stick: Symbol, Slogan, Surprise, Salient, and Story. Every idea worth remembering hits at least three of these. The part that floored me was his "near miss" technique. Don't just show what's right show what almost looks right but isn't. That contrast is when the brain actually locks something in permanently. His final rule before any big talk: end with a contribution, not a summary. Don't recap what you said. Tell people what you gave them that they didn't have before they walked in. I've used this framework in pitches, interviews, and presentations ever since watching it, and the results are not subtle. Patrick Winston passed away in 2019, but this lecture is still free on MIT OpenCourseWare. One hour, watched by millions, and it costs absolutely nothing. The most important class MIT ever put on the internet isn't about code or math. It's about how to make people actually listen to you.

Kobe Bryant: "Failure doesn't exist, it's a figment of your imagination" An interviewer asks: "Are you someone who loves to win or hates to lose?" Kobe responds: "I'm neither. I play to figure things out. I play to learn something. Because if you play with a fear of failure or you play with the will to win that supersedes fear, I think it's a weakness either way. If you play with fear of failing, you'll capitulate to that fear. If you play with the sense of 'I want to win, I want to win,' then you have the fear of what happens if you don't. But if you find common ground in the center, you're unfazed by either. That enables you to stay in the moment and not feel anything other than what's in front of you." The interviewer asks: "How did you become someone who doesn't seem afraid of failing?" Kobe responds: "What does failure mean? It doesn't exist. It's a figment of your imagination." He explains with an analogy: "Let's use happy endings. Everybody wants a happy ending, right? Snow White finds her prince and lives happily ever after. Well, I call BS on that because two months later, they had an argument and he's sleeping on the couch. The point is: the story continues. So if you fail on Monday, the only way it's a failure is if you decide to not progress from that. If I fail today, I'm going to learn something from that failure and try again on Tuesday. That's why failure doesn't exist." The interviewer asks: "If you finished your career without a championship, would you have looked at that as a failure?" Kobe: "No. I would look at it as being extremely disappointed, because I had a dream and goals I wanted to accomplish. If I didn't accomplish those goals, I'd have to ask myself why. Poor leadership? Failure to communicate with my teammates? Lack of preparation? Those would be reasons why I didn't win. So I'd have to analyze that. And as I evolved post-basketball into business, those same weaknesses would reveal themselves there too. If I don't learn from that, I'm going to struggle again." He concludes: "I can take those situations and learn from them and have them make me a better person later in life. But if I don't take that stuff and apply it someplace else, that's failing. The worst possible thing you can ever do is to stop. It's to not learn."

Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus invited 70 players to the first two alignment camps of the season. Interesting to see how players across the age profiles are represented in each positional group. Development of youngsters (especially in the tight 5) will be paramount in 2026.

My favorite quote from Atomic Habits by James Clear: "It doesn't make sense to continue wanting something if you're not willing to do what it takes to get it. If you don't want to live the lifestyle, then release yourself from the desire. To crave the result but not the process is to guarantee disappointment."

Over the past decade, schoolboy rugby programmes have started to closely resemble a professional set up Avuyile Saluwa and Rugby365 took a deep dive into the world of High Performance coaches in schoolboy rugby: bit.ly/4sNCaID

Remember when Quinton de Kock walked off while fielding due to dehydration and cramps, as food poisoning hit the Proteas and left them with no substitutes. Then Mandeep Singh, India A’s 12th man, was permitted to field for South Africa. True spirit of cricket 👏❤️

This is insanely good! 😳😳