Student of the Game

Four years of semi-pro rugby, then five as a performance analyst — Ospreys, Nederland Rugby. The job looked like analysis. Most of it was production: 24-hour coding turnarounds, opposition reports built from scratch every week, presentations rebuilt from last week’s bones.

And underneath it, the quieter problem: the knowledge that mattered lived in people’s heads. When they left, it left with them.

In 2024 I moved into AI-enabled business environments and watched companies systemise exactly the work sport still does from memory. Meeting records that answer questions. Documents that draft themselves from work already done. Handovers that survive the person leaving.

Coaching environments aren’t talent-poor. They’re system-poor. Business optimises systems because the P&L makes inefficiency visible. Sport optimises moments because the weekend result hides it. SOTG exists to close that gap.

A continuing reference manual on building modern coaching environments with AI. The library locates every system on the eight layers of a modern coaching system. The newsletter explores one of them every Sunday.

• Not AI news. The landscape changes weekly; your match week doesn’t.
• Not tool hype. Every system is reviewed for what it upgrades and what load it removes — most tools don’t make the cut.
• Not productivity content. This is coaching-specific, built from the work behind the work.