NSW Waratahs coach Daryl Gibson has revealed there will be plenty of change at the struggling Super Rugby franchise, but is "100 per cent" confident there's no player-driven push to oust him.
A Fairfax report on Monday claimed he had lost the support of a number of unnamed players, but Gibson dismissed the report as "unsubstantiated, second source, whisper and rumour."
He said he hadn't felt the need to ask the players if they had a problem with him.
The Waratahs have a 4-11 win-loss record going into Saturday's final-round match against the Western Force, but Gibson is understood to have the backing of the NSW Rugby Union to start the third and final year of his contract in 2018.
Among the changes Gibson is planning is revamping their pre-season training after viewing teams from rival codes in the Moore Park precinct: the Sydney Roosters NRL side and the Sydney Swans AFL club.
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Gibson said he had spoken to Roosters coach Trent Robinson, whose team had a dismal 2016 campaign before returning to premiership contention this year after changing their pre-season routine.
"It's worked very well for him this season, he definitely had a shake-up after his results last year," Gibson said.
"It's something that we're going to follow. They changed their pre-season schedule to what they had been following for the last nine years.
"I think it's time for us to have a little shake-up of when we do our hard days, our heavy days, our days off, all that scheduling that goes into pre-season.
"There's change all over the place. We're going through numerous internal and external reviews that will unearth those problems that I've talked about and then having the courage to make the change."
Gibson made the interesting admission that the assumptions he made at the start of the year around his list hadn't materialised.
'We've had to pare our game back quite a lot from that wild sort of expansive style that we've tried to play to a more pragmatic field," Gibson said.
"I thought at the start of the season we would be far more mobile than what we were and a faster team.
"What we've found is we're still quite a big team and didn't move quite as well as what we'd hoped, so that restricts us from what we're trying to do."
