Coach Dan McKellar said the Waratahs had copped “a nice little reality check” after crashing to their first defeat of the year, and losing star centre Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii to a potentially long-term injury as well.
The Hurricanes blew the Tahs off the park in a one-sided game at Allianz Stadium, scoring nine tries to three and banking maximum points in a 40-point drubbing.
It wasn’t a record margin, but only just, after the Canes beat the Waratahs by 42 points in Wellington last year.
But the Tahs’ poor night out already had extra salt in the wound, after Suaalii suffered a hamstring injury in the warm-up. It scratched him from the game, and given the nature of the injury, could potentially keep him out up to six weeks.
“It caps off a disappointing evening,” McKellar said. “We don’t know (how long Suaalii will be sidelined) yet, but he looked pretty sore, so I’d suggest it’s not a couple of weeks, I think it’s probably longer than that.”
The Tahs were coming off a bye and two wins from their first two games, but their game unravelled slowly – and then quickly – as the game wore on.
Multiple turnovers, poor defence and aimless attacking options, with the ball and off the boot, were feasted upon by the Hurricanes, who said they’d studied the Waratahs and built a gameplan to frustrate them, turn ball over and attack on the counter.
And that’s exactly how it turned out. Though they had more possession, the Waratahs gave up 18 turnovers and ended up missing 28 of their 128 tackles, with the Canes making 12 clean breaks.
After being in touch when trailing 17-12 at halftime, the Tahs conceded six tries in the second half, and at one point were down to 13 men after losing two players to the sinbin.
Most of the Canes’ nine tries came soon after turnovers or mistakes from the Waratahs, and frustratingly for McKellar, those errors often came while the hosts were on the attack in the Canes’ red zone, or straight after NSW had scored points.
Compounding the problems was a night of aimless and ineffective kicking from the Tahs, giving the Canes easy possession or let-offs under pressure.
“I can tell you where it unravelled, it was our turnovers,” McKellar said.
“First of all, we turned over the ball way too much, whether that be at lineout, whether that be first phase or second phase from lineout, and we turned it over in general play.
“On top of that, we didn’t kick well, our kicking hurt us and put us under pressure, probably more so in the first half than the second half. And off the back of turnovers and kicking poorly, we had to do a whole lot of defence, transition defence, and against the Hurricanes that’s where they hurt you.
“We spoke about that all week, but we didn’t execute it, it’s as simple as that, and they had a night where things fell into their hands. We were well beaten across the park, it’s just incredibly disappointing, and a nice little reality check.
“What we’ve got to look at is the why, why that happened.”
The Tahs scored first and looked good in defence early, and Max Jorgensen even turned in another spectacular effort with no space to score the first of his two tries in the opening half.
But the Waratahs trailed at halftime 17-12, after simple mistakes following their tries gifted the Hurricanes easy territory, and eventually tries.
The wheels fell off for the Waratahs in the second half, when the visitors scored twice in the first 10 minutes, each time after the Tahs had turned over possession while on attack in the Canes’ quarter.
When the Waratahs lost two men to yellow cards later in the half, the Canes were brutally efficient in exploiting their advantage, running in four more tries.
In front of a crowd of 15,460, the Waratahs somehow looked flat and fatigued, despite having had the bye last week.
Waratahs captain Matt Philip gathered the players after the game on the field for an extended talk. Asked what had been said, Philip replied: “Look, we spoke about, you know, the 2026 Waratahs, that’s not us, that’s not how we’re going to play and that’s not going to define our season that game.
“So I’m not going to sit here and give you heaps of reasons. We’re going to react from that, and as players we’re going to review hard and show with our actions next week what this jersey meant to us because obviously that was a very disappointing night and that’s all I’ve got on that.”
One of the very few positives was the first sighting of young reserve fullback Sid Harvey, on debut from the bench. The rookie from Narrabri looked assured at Super Rugby level, and having outshone more senior teammates, could find himself in the starting side as soon as next week.
“He’s a very, very good young footballer. Played his first of what will probably be many games for New South Wales tonight,” McKellar said.
“He was probably one of the shining lights, to be honest, especially in that last half an hour. He came on with 20, 25 minutes to go and performed well. So, disappointing that we don’t get to sing the song for him on his debut. But as I said, there’ll be many more to come.”