'Copped a spray': How a brutal honest session has flicked Waratahs' switch

Believing they have set a new standard, the NSW Waratahs are promising not to budge from the form that reignited the side’s Super Rugby Pacific finals hopes.

Maligned for years as the competition’s Jekyll-and-Hyde outfit, the Waratahs have too often been hot one week, cold the next.

But hooker Ethan Dobbins is challenging teammates not to dip below the benchmark performance shown in Saturday night’s stirring 30-28 derby win over the ACT Brumbies in Canberra.

After blowing match-winning second-half leads in back-to-back losses to the Queensland Reds and Blues, the Waratahs roared back to life to claim a first victory in nine trips to the nation’s capital.

“We can stack good plays together and we can do it for 40 to 60 minutes. It was just a matter of doing it for 80 minutes,” Dobbin said after emerging from a much happier team meeting room on Monday.

“That was the defining moment where we did do that for the whole 80 minutes.”

Dobbin credited an honesty session last week instigated by captain Matt Phillip for reviving the team’s flagging fortunes.

“We talked about standards and we talked about what it takes to win and what we have to change and we had a hard look at ourselves,” the hooker said.

“Probably copped a spray and we flicked a switch. Now that we’ve ticked that box, I really think there’s a line in the sand of what we’re capable of and this is what we want to do and we’re not going backwards from here.”

The Waratahs won’t have to wait long to test their new standards against the one of the competition’s best, with Dan McKellar’s men off to Waikato to face the Chiefs on Saturday.

“Every Kiwi game actually, it’s pretty easy to get up for it,” Dobbin said.

“The Chiefs, we’ve beaten them last year, we believe we can do it again and we took a lot of confidence and a lot of key points out of that Brumbies game, which we will be taking definitely into that Chiefs game.

“Just little things around our confidence and energy that I really think won us key points in that Brumbies game and those will be the turning factor against a game like the Chiefs.”

Still only sitting seventh on the table, the Tahs then host Moana Pasifika before taking on the defending champion Crusaders in Christchurch to complete a torrid block of matches against non-Australian rivals.