The Waratahs face a week of soul searching as coach Daryl Gibson braces for the brutal backlash from most ignominious defeat in the side's Super Rugby history.
Exasperated captain Michael Hooper believes it is unfair that Gibson is accepting full responsibility after the Waratahs' horror start to 2017 plumbed new depths with a humiliating 26-24 home loss to the soon-to-be-extinct Kings on Friday night.
"He is the way forward in this club," a defiant Hooper said in the depressing aftermath to the Tahs' sixth loss from eight games this campaign.
Replacing Michael Cheika last year - two seasons after the Waratahs' drought-breaking premiership campaign - has so far proven an impossible act to follow for Gibson and the former All Black and Crusaders star is preparing to "cop it" from critics calling for his head.
But Hooper and fellow Wallabies star Bernard Foley insist the dire position the 2014 champions find themselves in is not the coach's fault.
"We're the ones playing. There's 15 of us on the field playing so it's an individual thing and an effort thing," the skipper said.
"We're all fit. It's the want to be there that's questioned."
Hooper warned that a "cruel" review of Friday night's second-half collapse would "pick people out" and challenged teammates to man up, saying the season wasn't lost yet.
"We've got to wade through all the rubbish and find out what it is ... what actually is the issue," he said.
"We're in a tough place and there's got to be a switch in momentum at some point. We've yet to feel that. We're yet to get that.
"Teams that get a roll on, guys start feeling it. It all turns positive. It all turns really exciting. You want to be there, you want to do it.
"But when things aren't going well, are you going to be there? It's harder to say.
"So it's going to be a bad weekend - and a long one."
Wishing he could take back his decision to spurn three easy points from a penalty goal attempt in front of the sticks that would have gifted the Waratahs an eight-point buffer late in the game, five-eighth Bernard Foley also said "Daryl's still got the playing group".
"Everyone's right behind him," the playmaker said.
"What we're doing as players is not reflecting that belief and that trust in what we have in our game, in our coaches and in this organisation.
"It's a low point, but you can only go one way; that's back up.
"So we've got to go backs to the wall and just fight. We've got to wake up with an attitude that we want to be better on Monday and keep fighting."
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