Western Force coach Richard Graham says his side played well enough to win in their heartbreaking Super Rugby loss to the Crusaders.
As has often happened throughout the club's history, the Force led with less than 10 minutes remaining but conceded two late tries to fall 42-30 to the Christchurch-based side on Saturday.
Graham said while he was frustrated with aspects of the side's game, he was still happy with their overall performance in a game where they fell to a 12-0 deficit within 10 minutes but came back to make a contest of it.
"We showed some fantastic character. We were composed and we got ourselves back into it," he said.
"Ultimately, I thought we were good enough to win it. We just made a couple of crucial errors right there at the end that hurt us."
"If we got them to a breakdown, I thought some of our defence was outstanding. I thought our hits were as good as they have been at any point this season."
"It was just the unstructured stuff that caused us problems."
But Graham said his side would have to produce a better performance to beat New South Wales in Sydney next Saturday.
"Clearly our kicking game and our one-on-one tackles in our kick-chase need improvement," he said.
"It's important for us, we need to keep winning. We're getting a full-strength side, as we did in round one, and now we need to win."
"It would be nice to rain on (the Waratahs') parade. But we're proud and competitive people and I couldn't care about NSW. We need to focus ourselves and prepare well for the weekend."
Graham said he was pleased with the way star Wallabies flanker David Pocock performed in his first appearance since he suffered a knee injury against the Sharks in round three.
"It was good to get him through the 80 minutes," he said.
"We planned to just asses it and see how he was going and he was going well enough to leave him on for the whole game, which was good."
Fellow Test loose forward Matt Hodgson will be a chance to return to the run-on side against the Waratahs after starting on the bench against the Crusaders in his return from a shoulder injury, while Mitch Inman could also make the side after a long layoff with an elbow ailment.
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