The Melbourne Rebels' winless woes have continued into Round 5 as they fell to their 10th straight loss, their fifth in 2022, after they were unable to convert their riches of possession and territory, falling 24-19 to the Waratahs at the SCG.
Floundering second from the bottom of the Super Rugby Pacific table, the Rebels arrived in Sydney desperate to turn their season around, instead they failed to truly threaten the Waratahs defence, only passing 13 phases in their 68' minute Cabous Eloff try. Meanwhile their defence was easily picked apart with the Tahs' quick offloads opening up plenty of holes in the defensive line.
But the stats were in the Rebels favour, with the men from Melbourne running 250 more metres with the ball compared to the Waratahs, they made over 200 passes compared to the Tahs 91 and had 134 runs compared to just 66. The possession and territory were also heavily in their favour. According to Rebels coach Kevin Foote it's positive signs that the Rebels are starting to find their way.
"I think the stats were good, I think we played some good rugby tonight," Foote said post match. "It started to come, I think our attacking is starting to show, some of our offloads, some of the metres carried. Unfortunately, I think we let in two soft tries early and that hurts us.
"I think, maybe again, we're just not finishing off opportunities when we're really starting to build pressure on the opposition. But I'm really positive from those results, if I look at those things and what went well for us, I can see ourselves playing well and the rugby we want to play."
After Foote called out his experienced Wallabies players following their loss to the Brumbies last weekend, Matt Io'omua and Reece Hodge made a much bigger impact against the Tahs, while Matt Philip made his presence felt at the lineout, continually disrupting the Tahs ball, but hooker Jordan Velese struggled with his accuracy.
"We've got a very good leadership group and everyone's growing in that space and the leadership group are owning that. They had a really hard look at themselves this week and said 'look we've got to play well' and I think they were exceptional tonight. From that the energy starts to build into everyone around them and that's important.
"The rugby we want to play, it's starting to come, the stats are there, we've just got to keep going on it, keep believing. It's a funny thing belief, if you stop believing you fall into that big hole, we haven't stopped believing, so we'll just keep going."
Continually ticking the scoreboard over with penalties, the Rebels were kept in the match due to some poor Tahs discipline and lack of accuracy in crucial moments, but on multiple occasions the Rebels failed to convert their opportunities - a Carter Gordon attempt for touch going dead in the 77th minute was emblematic of what continues to go wrong for the Rebels.
Meanwhile, their own discipline was lacking at crucial moments, a yellow card to Efi Ma'afy in the 52nd minute for a dangerous lifting tackle of Izaia Peres just minutes after the hooker had taken to the field, resulted in a crucial try to the Waratahs, as they built a nice score buffer.
Rebels wing Glen Vaihu, meanwhile was the standout performer for the struggling side. After a stunning 50m dash off the kick-off, the 20-year-old made several sniping runs, accumulating a total of 139m with ball in hand. While Eloff's try scoring run continued, with his efforts up front resulting in the team's only try of the night.
There were mixed emotions for the Waratahs as they headed to the sheds. Although they had another win under their belt and their first back-to-back victories since 2020, coach Darren Coleman was left disappointed with his team's inability to close out the match - an issue they struggled with against the Force last week.
"There were mixed emotions, it's good to get a win but it was definitely well short of our best performance, both in quality and intensity," Coleman said. "A few of our areas weren't great, it looked like we didn't want to win the game and they [Rebels] couldn't win the game - they kept shooting themselves in the foot to win the game in that second half. Bittersweet, frustrated in the performance but happy with the result.
"We've got to take our game to the next level, it's pretty much a given that we're going to compete, we're not going to quit, we're going to stay in the fight. The team's done it now, eight games since l've been here, and they ripped in, so now we've just got to do things better. We've got to be more accurate."
Coleman wouldn't accept that his players were struggling with concentration during their matches, instead blamed himself for failing to motivate his players properly ahead of their game.
"As much as you want to be up and at your peak every game, you're going to have a flat day eventually and I don't think I delivered the best pregame and didn't do enough around the motivational side of things because I think we looked a little demotivated, if I'm honest. Then we scored a couple of easy tries and sort of thought we could canter through.
"That's two weeks in a row, where we should have, I thought, won more comfortably than we did, so we've definitely got to improve that aspect."
The Tahs, meanwhile, will be sweating on several key players ahead of next week's clash with the Reds.
Angus Bell failed to return to the field for the second half after he walked gingerly from the pitch with back spasms, Geoff Cridge went off with a head knock late in the first half, while Ben Donaldson was also sidelined with a calf strain deep in the second half. All three could warrant several weeks off.