After opening with two straight wins, the Waratahs host the second-placed Blues in Sydney on Saturday night desperate to avoid a third consecutive defeat after falling to the Hurricanes and Queensland Reds in their past two starts.
While believing the team's improved attack in the last-start 26-17 loss in Brisbane was a positive, winger Harry Potter insists the onus remains on the backs to step up and take some heat of the Tahs forwards.
"We need to be more ruthless," Potter said.
"That's probably our backs' responsibility to take some pressure off those forwards and score the tries through us.
"The forwards are asked to do a lot around the field. You ask them to kick-chase and you ask them to counter-attack and then we get down there and then you're expecting them to score."
"Us backs need to take some responsibility for that as well. Like, we can't expect them just to be direct, going through the front door all the time."
Despite claiming that the backs need to do more to pull their weight, Potter disputed the notion the team relies too much on the individual talents of winger Max Jorgensen and insisted they work together as a unit.
"We were fortunate that in the first few games, Max pulled some tries out that were just world class and sort of came from nothing," Potter said.
"We've got other strike weapons in the backline, which hopefully at different stages of the season, will be able to do the same sort of things for us."
The 28-year-old knows the Blues are a formidable outfit.
"The Blues are well known as being a physical team," Potter said.
"They are front door first. They're going to come direct and they've got some big ball carriers, particularly in the forwards, that you've got to deal with.
"And then on the other side of the ball, they've got some big guys and they're going to defend well.
"So we're going to have to carry low efficiently and attack well. Otherwise, you know, we give them things to hit and they're going to build their game off that."
The Waratahs are clear underdogs, based both on current form and ladder position and on their historic rivalry with the Blues.
It has been over a decade since NSW beat the Auckland-based outfit, their most recent win coming in 2015.
Last year the Tahs were thumped 46-6 at Eden Park.
