The 41-12 defeat of the Otago Highlanders on Saturday was the first by an Australian team against New Zealand opposition in the competition in 41 matches over two years and Waratahs skipper Michael Hooper was delighted to put it all behind him.
"It's frustrating to have to talk about it," said the flanker.
"(It's great) to have that stuff put behind and speak about another great challenge next week in the Chiefs down there," he added.
"This team is capable of really good performances ... we've been going incrementally up and how we continue to do that is the challenge."
The Waratahs had a helping hand when Highlanders winger Tevita Nabura was shown a red card for kicking his marker in the face in the 19th minute but coach Daryl Gibson was in any case delighted with the performance.
"We took a step towards being the team I know this team can be," he said.
"Half the battle is inside your head and tonight we played with confidence, scored some excellent tries and I'm just really pleased for the boys."
Inconsistency has been Gibson's bane this year as the Waratahs have mixed some brilliant attacking rugby with error-strewn patches where they can barely put a handful of phases together.
The bonus point victory sent them six points clear at the top of the Australian conference with six rounds to go but more importantly got them back to winning ways.
They blew two chances to end the New Zealand hex in their previous two matches, losing 24-21 to the Auckland Blues at home then somehow allowed the Canterbury Crusaders to come back from 29-0 down to win 31-29 in Christchurch.
Hooper admitted their game management had been poor against the Crusaders and thought the 2014 champions had dealt better with the not always straightforward task of making the extra player tell against the Highlanders.
"I thought the boys really started ... to work where they were short, work where we could get one up on them and our set piece was able to give the platform for our game managers to pick them off and run in some really nice tries," he said.
(Reporting by Nick Mulvenney; Editing by Amlan Chakraborty)
