As rugby's abbreviated game joins other international codes in the constant financial planning, talent mobilisation, globe-trotting for tournaments and endless performance reviews which are the maelstrom of the Olympic four-year 'cycle', you can expect high turnover of players and coaches alike.
Therefore, it is as certain as death and taxes that New Zealand sevens will never have another Sir Gordon Tietjens.
Moving into my first home this weekend, I boxed up some old VHS cassettes and discovered I still have my copy of the 1994 Hong Kong sevens tournament with a young Tongan powerhouse named Jonah Lomu emblazoned on the cover.
This was also Tietjens' first year at the helm, as well as up in the lookout perch and down in the rowing galley or any other shipping metaphor you could use.
He alone had to do everything from the coaching to conditioning, player nutrition, and game footage analysis - literally being the chief cook and bottle washer to a professional standard before the term professional legally applied to the sport itself.
Therefore, at age 60, the last bastion of the amateur era hung up his golden whistle this week. And what a ride it has been.
In January, when I was more optimistic about our Rio chances with Tietjens finally getting his hands on a couple of 'A' players in Sonny Bill Williams and Ardie Savea - which ultimately proved too little, too late after two seasons of regression on the world stage - I called Sir Gordon "our greatest-ever rugby coach".
I also relayed a story from 2009 at Rugby News magazine when my editor called up 'Titch' to get his thoughts on a player he had been told was injured but had apparently made a miracle recovery to sit on the bench for the Chiefs in their big Super Rugby game that weekend.
"His furious 'what!' at the revelation could be heard from the headpiece and through the glass windows into the next office."
Despite being one of our first examples of a truly professional coach, Tietjens had to go to the coal face every year and scratch with his fingernails to find hard rocks which he would furiously polish up into diamonds, only to have the little red wagons of Super Rugby come along and sweep them up.
Tietjens either directly discovered or significantly improved the prospects of nearly 50 players who became noteworthy 15-a-side All Blacks.
You know the names. There was Cullen, Lomu, Rokocoko, Muliaina, Gear (Rico and Hosea), Savea (Julian and Ardie), Jane, Smith (Ben), Messam, Barrett, and Naholo.
50 of them. By one man.
There are a multitude of rugby development personnel earning five and even six figure salaries in various academies and franchises who would sell their grandmothers to be able to quote those kinds of numbers on their CV.
For 22 years, non-stop, Sir Gordon took squads away to over 100 international tournaments, as time and again he spun you-know-what into silver, or more accurately gold.
There were 12 World Series titles from 17 attempts, two World Cups out of five attempts and four Commonwealth Games gold medals plus one silver from five attempts.
Consider that before writing his epitaph based on the events of the past 12 months.
Yes, with hindsight, there were some unfortunate decisions made - Kurt Baker should have been on the plane to Rio rather than sulking back to Taranaki after pittance offer to be the team's 13th man.
Even with his accumulation of injuries, Baker could have provided the x-factor to break up opposition's defensive patterns, instead of the slow, plodding phases we saw in South America.
The Ben Smith "will he, won't he? Nah, we don't need him" saga didn't help either, although the gifted All Black fullback came out this week with nothing but praise for his former mentor.
"Something I probably learnt from him was that when you train under Titch he always tries to make sure that you're really struggling, and then he tests you.
"So he'll put some fitness work in and then we might've played a game, and that's when you've really got to work the hardest, and you might be struggling a bit. So I found it really good because when you're blowing, you had to make good decisions."
"I think he was one of a kind."
Probably, by the end, the constant strain had gotten too much for even this cerebral drill instructor, which Sir Gordon was able to admit publicly this week, so more than likely the great taskmaster has only just admitted it to himself.
"I gave it everything as a coach," he said.
"I felt this year, with the injuries, the expectation, we still qualified and came third in the World Series.
"I just felt the turnarounds and the pressure that created... going through all that preparation to go to the Olympics, took its toll in the end.
"It confirmed in my own mind, at that time, that it was time [to go] at the end of the Olympics, win or lose."
The super coach remains eager as ever to find and scout talent for sevens, and it would be absolutely criminal if the next person in the hot seat does not lean on him for as much advice and background information as possible.
Yes, it is important to set your own mark and enforce it, but when the bloke who virtually wrote the book on sevens rugby is only a phone call away, then you keep that number on speed dial.