Duane Vermeulen told the Boks Office crew that the 2019 World Cup triumph was genuinely unplanned — Rassie Erasmus inherited a team mid-cycle, roughly a year out from Japan, and had to shift an entire squad's mindset toward something nobody thought was realistic. "We never expected even to be in that position," Vermeulen said, calling it the standout moment of his career precisely because of that improbability. He also offered a rare inside view of how Erasmus has evolved as a leader over their twenty-year association: the young Rassie was intensely physical and competitive, getting into lineout drills to put pressure on players and trying to read the ball carrier's intentions before the call was even made. The modern version, Vermeulen argued, operates almost entirely in the psychological space — calculated, strategic, often seeming random but never actually so. "Sometimes you think it's just random, but it's actually calculated," he said, describing a coaching environment where both players and staff pitch ideas into a common pot, with no egos and no hierarchy protecting bad plans.