When Darren Coleman and the coaching staff reviewed the footage from the Waratahs' trial win over the Brumbies, it was something off the field that caught the ire of the coaches.
Whilst the team were winning the battle on the field, it was the Brumbies who ran off the field and beat the Waratahs into the sheds for the major break.
It's these simple contests Coleman and the Waratahs are looking to win heading into the future.
Whilst it doesn't seem like much in the grand scheme of things, particularly when the side would go on to win their first game in nearly a year, it reflects the need for the Waratahs to compete in every aspect of the game.
This is the attitude driving the Waratahs into Super Rugby Pacific, using the trials and pre-season to build winning habits ahead of their first match on February 18.
“One of those things is that importance of competing for everything,” assistant coach Pauli Taumoepeau told media. “You just compete for everything. Darren showed us a clip (from the Brumbies game) where we were slow off the field at half-time, the Brumbies beat us into the tunnel.
“He came into the team meeting and showed us and said 'let’s run and beat them' so it’s about creating that competitive edge and advantage.
“We’ve had a fair bit of habit changing. We’re asking a lot of boys so where we see them at the moment, we’re seeing a lot of habits being changed around the group.
“When as an organisation you have no wins, and I’ve been involved in a couple of those teams across clubland, one of the things you want to change is the habits of wanting to win and the importance of that feeling.”
It's all part of the journey to 'reset' and put a winless 2021 behind them in a new era for the club.
Session by session, the Waratahs look to use the fuel from the past 12 months to 'move forward' as they prepare for Super Rugby Pacific.
"Every day when we come in and every game, we have that opportunity to move forward,” he notes.
“Every time we have a chance to be better and we execute, the further we get away from 2021. So every time we get on a training field and don’t have a good day or we are lazy around our habits, if we had a bad day against the Brumbies or didn’t perform against the Shute Shield sides, then we’re still very close to what 2021 is.
“The only way we can move forward other than time is by moving forward in way of executing and changing habits of winning. Whatever it is, as an organisation, we’re trying to do that wasn’t towards that, we feel changed a few habits around training and how the guys are performing, even how we mark the guys how they train and play is harder."
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Taumoepeau admits whilst it will always sit as part of the team's history, building winning momentum and habits as they have in the past fortnight, can go a long way to sorting out any lingering demons around the young group.
“I think the reality is if we can take our opportunities every Saturday or every day we’re here at work, every day we get better and we get that win, you step further away from what was 2021," he added.
“It’s part of our history. It’s always going to be there. We’re not pretending that it didn’t it happen because it did but what we can do is those guys that were there, they’re burnt enough to show some resilience and wants to be here when the tide finally turns.
“We’re always going to be brought back to 2021, we don’t really want to talk about these things when you're moving forward and get dragged down by your past but it’s important to win.
“Some of these guys haven’t won for a while so we came off feeling really good. A lot of the feedback from the players (after the Brumbies win) was that it was nice to be around a winning changing room. We were buzzing, probably would have been weird for the public or Brumbies to see us smiling like that after the trial but we think those little wins are important when it comes to Round One next week.
“You can’t try and change that habit overnight and that’s what Darren’s been trying to do in the way of building things around training and using trials to get into that frame of mind about how important winning is and how important small actions are to a big win."
