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THE Waratahs had barely showered, dressed, packed and boarded the team bus after their loss to the Chiefs in Hamilton when they were ordered to watch a recording of their defeat for the late-night, 90-minute journey to Auckland.
The pain of letting slip what should have been a victory was still on their minds. The pain from the bumps and bruises that inevitably feel worse for the losing side had started to set in.
Watching the replay of their 20-17 defeat so soon must have been like rubbing salt into the wounds. But then, with the Waratahs set to return to New Zealand this week for their round-three clash against the Highlanders in Dunedin - and with sensitivities at their highest - the timing was perhaps perfect to quietly get across the message of their mistakes.
Exhaustion and the late hour got the better of some - five-eighth Kurtley Beale admitted that in the dark confines of the bus he fell asleep halfway through the replay. But others, such as breakaway Beau Robinson, admitted it was a good opportunity to calmly figure out what went wrong.
Coach Ewen McKenzie was in remarkably positive spirits after returning to Sydney yesterday. He believes NSW have their structure right but need to perfect the fine detail. Warranting obvious attention is NSW's poor execution, which resulted in several botched attacks because of dropped ball or poor passes. Ditto for a costly kicking game that too often meant the ball went out on the full.
"We don't feel we are doing things wrong," McKenzie said. "It is more about where we can improve. There are some subtle things which we have to keep working on - combinations and positional things. We are not worried about our structure.
"There were periods of the game we were very happy with. What we are trying to do is starting to come through. But our reaction to pressure in the last 20 minutes [dropped]. Even though we scored three tries, we genuinely felt we had a chance to do a bit better than we did.
"A couple of kicks out at the wrong time and that was the difference. [If] we had held field position in the last 10 minutes when we got two tries - [and] if we got field position again - we probably would have scored again."
NSW bagged one competition point for finishing within seven points of the Chiefs.
But McKenzie does not fear the loss will come back to bite the Waratahs in the inevitable bottleneck run into the finals.
"You can do that on every game. It is just a question of whether you can learn from it," he said.