The NSW Waratahs are calling for patience after enduring another "story of the season" loss that has almost certainly cruelled their Super Rugby Pacific finals hopes for a fourth straight year.
Coach Dan McKellar rued his side failing to convert any of seven first-half try-scoring opportunities in a 21-14 defeat to the Brumbies in Sydney on Friday night.
The Tahs staged a late fightback but ultimately paid the price for trailing 21-0 though 60 minutes of the do-or-die match.
Now needing a mathematical miracle to scrape into the finals, Australian rugby's great under-achievers are resigned to missing the play-offs.
"We want to be playing at the back end of the season and we're not, so it's a pretty easy answer - we're disappointed," McKellar said.
"But in terms of progress over the last two seasons, I think we've made huge progress. A lot of that the public can't see, so it's within the four walls of the building.
"You've got to understand when we took over this group, it was a group that had come last and were really lacking in a lot of key areas to perform consistently at this level.
"So we've made a lot of change and we're on the right track, but we're far from where we need to be.
"Progress is not always through, through results, but I understand that we need to get results."
A lack of attacking polish has been the Tahs' Achilles heel all season, and was again against the contrastingly clinical Brumbies.
"We've spoken about the A zone," McKellar said.
"If you look at the last two games, last week we sat at halftime and we had converted six from seven and we're up by 30 points.
"This week we were none from seven and, at one stage, none from 10."
One shining light was the emergence in recent weeks of playmaker Jack Bowen, who looks to have secured a stay of reprieve after the 22-year-old and fellow flyhalves Lawson Creighton, 27, and Jack Debreczeni, 32, all entered the 2026 campaign off contract at season's end.
"How he's driven the week for a young player, how he articulates," McKellar said of Bowen's influence on the team.
"We've given him a fair amount of responsibility around driving message and giving him that confidence to do that and you think of a player like Jack Bowen, where's he going to be when he's played 50 games?
"Like I sit there and listen to him address the group during the week and I was so impressed.
"And that's off the back of a handful and it's always come at the back end of the year over the last couple of years. Unfortunately he had a really disrupted pre-season.
"But you can see the growth in him."
