A seething Rob Simmons says the Waratahs "need to find a way" to win tight games after a gutting loss to the Brumbies.
Simmons was fuming after the Waratahs' 24-23 loss to the Brumbies, which was lost for NSW with a 77th minute try, and wasn't about to accept any "courageous loss" tags.
"There's a lot of pats on the back for a loss there, it annoys me a bit. Saying we're playing well, we did a lot of things right but we lost the game. We need to find a way to win that.
The Waratahs controlled proceedings for most of the night and added some of the best highlights to the game but Simmons said they needed to ensure they found some toughness.
"We just need to find a way," he said.
"There has to be some resilience there to show up again next week, we've got a game next week in six days. We need to find a way.
"It's not going to be easy, we showed we're a growing team, we're on that trajectory but we've got to win.
"You can't just keep saying, 'Oh, that was good', we lost the game.
"Do what you can to find it but we need to get a win."
Simmons led the way for the Waratahs and, along with second row partner Ned Hanigan, created some major headaches for the Brumbies at lineout time.
The Waratahs stole eight of 22 Brumbies lineouts, no mean feat against the usually stead ACT side, and Simmons said that was something he felt was improving.
"That's building, that's last three games now we've applied a lot of pressure at the defnsive lineout there," he said.
"It's not really spoken about a lot it's just a team and individually doing their roles and it's coming off.
The Waratahs were on the right end of the penalty count early in the game and held a 15-point lead at the half-hour mark but two quick Brumbies tries whittled that advantage down to just three points.
WARATAHS vs BRUMBIES: FIVE THINGS WE LEARNED
They finished on the wrong end of a 13-10 penalty tally at full-time but Simmons said his side should have been more prepared for the momentum to swing against them.
"It's a tough one, you talk about periods all through that game,the period before half-time (when the Brumbies scored two tries) didn't hurt, you know that's going to happen," he said.
"How often do games end up 90/10, it always ends up 50/50, the refs going to bring it back.
"Why? I don't know why that is but if you show dominance why doesn't it keep coming? I don't know. "
Coach Rob Penney said he felt the side's scrum could have been rewarded more but equally said his own charges needed to tighten up their discipline.
"(You have) a really dominant scrum and you get rewarded once and then you don't get rewarded again really, in fact you give away a few," he said.
"It's unfathomable how those conclusions are reached.
"That's a conversation we need to work through and clearly some ill-discipline around guys not quite getting back on side or rolling away from the defensive breakdown which has been a bit of a theme for us and we did really well last week we didn't have any of those situations but this week a few."
The Waratahs have a six-day turnaround before facing the Rebels at the SCG on Friday night.
