In his fifth column for irbsevens.com, South Africa Sevens coach Paul Treu looks ahead to his team's first acts as defending IRB Sevens World Series champions, and talks of the special culture that bonds his team.
For the first time this weekend, we're going to be defending our World Series title and all of that starts here in Dubai, where we're also the reigning champions. It's a big two days for us.
Every draw is tough, it's never going to be easy any more, and to play Wales in the same stadium where they won the Rugby World Cup Sevens in March is going to be intense because they will be out to prove something.
They know how to play there, they'll be confident there, they have their own set of contracted players now and they'll have a fair bit of support there too.
We also have to play Australia, who improved massively last season, they're one of the best up and coming teams at the moment with a young side under Michael O'Connor, and then the Arabian Gulf have a new coach, want to finish in the top eight apparently and will have lots of home support.
Olympic developments
What happened in Copenhagen in October could change a lot in the Sevens game, but I feel we are well prepared for it. What we have started in South Africa, our full-time professional Sevens programme, even seems like an Olympic programme.
From a high performance perspective, it's something that we had to drive from the top down, but now we're in the Olympics we will have to start also driving the programme from the bottom, up.
We've already begun identifying our best Under 16 and Under 18 players at this stage and now we have to see how we can best work those players into our prospective programmes. Also we've started to look at how we can filter it down to the provinces, the clubs and the schools.
2016 doesn't seem too far away - it isn't that far away - but in seven years time a young 19 year old with sublime talent and speed might be playing for South Africa in Dubai in preparation for going on to the Olympics. Today he or she is only 13, and we need to find them.
A culture of 'Team'
People talk about the pressure of defending titles, and it is there. The important thing is learning how to cope with it, which I think we've learnt to do now better than before. I can't ask my players to forget that they are the World Series champions, but it comes down to the way that we approach every game in our culture.
The best way to explain our team culture is by describing the same picture that I showed to the players one morning before we left for Dubai.
When we'd won the Cup in Edinburgh for the first time, Marius Schoeman was parading the trophy in his right hand, and I noticed he had strapping on with a word written on it.
Afterwards I picked up the tape that he had been wearing. Many players wear strapping and often write the name of a person or something symbolic to them, but Marius had written the word 'Team' on his strapping, and that for me just encapsulated what I think we stand for.
It's not about the individual players, it's not about the single line break or the piece of brilliance and one player getting the credit, it's about the team effort and how we gel together as a unit and achieve our goals together all the time.
Talk the talk, walk the walk
It's so important for me that the players also speak the right language, that they do the right things at the right time, because we might not always have the best talent in the world but the belief will always be there that we have the potential to become the best team in the world.
Last season we had the smallest team on the circuit, in terms of height and weight, we had four players under 80kgs, but I think we had that belief and against the bigger teams like New Zealand, Fiji, England, Samoa, Australia, it was that belief that got us through.
Last season it was the first time ever that we'd led the Series standings after the first two events in Dubai and George, and the players kept that number one spot right up until the end of the season, and we couldn't have done that without our team culture.
And that's how I want us to start this season again in Dubai. Believing.
