Inside the Drua’s training base, a huge poster says, “We will look to the hills where our help comes from”, which partly explains where they gain their strength from with fans that travelled for hours from all over the country by bus, bicycle and car to see their team.

Drua centre Iosefo Masi, who two years ago was on a training contract at the North Queensland Cowboys in the NRL, excelled for his team, running through for a hat-trick of tries in the first half that bamboozled the Waratahs and sent the crowd into a frenzy with umbrellas and placards flying into the air every time he touched the ball.

It looked ominous at half-time as the rain hammered the tin roof of the stand and the Waratahs went into the sheds 26-10 and a player down, after winger Mark Nawaqanitawase was sent to the sin bin for deliberately knocking the ball down on his 50th appearance in front of friends and family.

The Waratahs looked short of energy and ideas as they were frequently drawn into the unstructured rugby that the Drua excel at playing, but the second half brought a complete change for NSW as they finally found their confidence and rhythm.

Breakaway Charlie Gamble started the fightback with a try just after half-time, before Joey Walton, Mahe Vailanu and Lachlan Swinton all went over to complete what looked like an incredible comeback, tying the game at 36 points each.

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After 80 minutes, the crowd wasn’t sure whether this meant the game was over, most spectators not familiar with Super Rugby’s golden point period of extra time.

The Waratahs players looked absolutely exhausted, almost to a man lying on the ground, trying to shake some life into their legs and grind out a win that could save their season.

It wasn’t to be. Captain Jake Gordon, drenched in sweat, was left to try and make sense of the game.

“We’re probably good over a quarter of the way through the season,” Gordon said. “There are positives, I don’t want to get bogged down in the negatives, but we’re an aspirational team, we want to be at the top end of the table and we need to be more clinical. We need to find ways to close out those games.”

In a season of painfully narrow defeats, including consecutive two-point losses against the Highlanders and the Blues, the Waratahs board will now make the difficult decision whether Coleman is the man to take this team forward. There is no straightforward answer to their predicament.

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