In his first column of the new year, Springbok Sevens coach Paul Treu looks frankly and honestly at how South Africa can get their IRB Sevens World Series title defence back on track in 2010.

The first two events of the new season were obviously disappointing for us and I think we've had to come away and ask some pretty big questions of ourselves and of the way we need to equip ourselves for the challenge of the coming season.

We are still the World Series champions and we have definite aspirations to play like that and win trophies, but I think we are going to have to change the way that we play to make up for the fact that we are missing some important players.

Coming away from Dubai and George, looking at the tapes and also watching the highlights of last season, you realise just how much we did miss some key players from our World Series-winning season.

Players like Gio Aplon, Robert Ebersohn, Vuyo Zangqa, Renfred Dazel, Lionel Mapoe, Philip Snyman. They are all very difficult to replace because among those names are our real game-breakers and that has made us realise that we need to redefine our roles on the pitch and reconsider what each player now has to do in order for us to be challenging the other top sides on a consistent basis and winning Cups again.

I've always said that our team culture and ethos has been built on exactly that, the Team, not individuals. But there's also no hiding from the fact that it's difficult to replace outstanding individuals and then compete against other brilliant players when you are rebuilding.

Irreplaceable

Watching the highlights you only need to see the telling moments to realise how important our game-breakers were in the 2008/09 season. In Dubai we were all tied up with England in the final and it was Gio Aplon who broke the length of the pitch and fed Ryno Benjamin with the final pass for the winning try.

Even before that in the semi final against Fiji when we were down it was Vuyo Zangqa who scored a crucial try. In George it was Renfred Dazel who was at the heart of pretty much everything we did, scoring himself or creating chances for people like Robert Ebersohn, and in Scotland in the semi final against the hosts it was Gio Aplon who again scored a try.

These players don't just come along every day, they took a while to find and even longer to make into world class Sevens players. We still have the hard grafters, Frankie Horne, Mpho Mbiyozo and those guys up front in the forwards, but without the proven talent outside to back up Mzwandile and Ryno it's difficult to compete with the likes of New Zealand who have Tomasi Cama, Kurt Baker, Zar Lawrence, and Sherwin Stowers in the backs; England have Dan Norton and Christian Wade on top of Ben Gollings who are their game breakers; Samoa have Mikaele Pesamino.

I don't think we have the players with that type of quality and experience at the moment, so we're having to go about things a different way, persevere and give talented young guys like Cecil Afrika more game time and let them develop.

Dazel on the road to fitness

Taking the Vipers to Mar del Plata was definitely a good exercise because it allowed me to see some of the younger players, who are going to be the core of this side going forward.

Hopefully Renfred will also now be fully ready for Wellington. We took him out to Argentina to give him more game time and help with his fitness and he passed a fitness test in Stellenbosch recently, so it looks like one of those key players will be back.

We now need to work together as a team, work on addressing our shortcomings and see how we respond to this adversity.

As a coach these times are obviously tough because we all want success, but I also think it's interesting to see how players and the collective react. You learn a lot more about your players when their backs are to the wall, and they will also learn more about themselves.

South Africa's first opportunity to get back to winning ways will be at the NZI Sevens in Wellington on 5-6 February.