After four rounds of Super Rugby, Waratahs coach Darren Coleman has a record of one win and three losses, and will soon find out if he has done enough to convince the NSW Rugby board that he deserves a contract extension.

It is far from a straightforward decision. After the first-round loss to the Reds, the Waratahs have beaten the Crusaders and been competitive in narrow defeats to the Highlanders and the Blues. The board will need to decide whether they continue to employ Coleman based on potential or instead point to the cold, hard results that remain unchanged in the record books by any context of improvement.

The Waratahs have lost by two points to New Zealand opposition in Sydney twice in the last two weeks, first coming within a penalty kick of defeating the Highlanders and on Saturday somehow staying in the contest against a physically superior Blues side. Next week, it gets tougher with an away fixture against the Fijian Drua.

Coleman inherited a winless Waratahs side in 2021 and in the next two seasons led them to sixth-place finishes, getting knocked out in successive quarter-finals. This season, with Coleman attempting to prove he was the right man to take NSW rugby forward, Coleman was given one of the toughest fixture lists possible.

After a comprehensive 40-22 first-round defeat to the Reds, few gave Coleman’s side a chance against the Crusaders the following week in Melbourne. An impressive victory was duly delivered, but the achievement does need to be set in the subsequent context that the Christchurch side remain winless after four rounds.

Arguably, the loss against the Highlanders is the one that could have completely changed the narrative of Coleman’s future. With the siren gone, Tane Edmed had an opportunity to win the game with a 39-metre penalty goal. It fell short, and instead of Coleman becoming the man who had driven the Waratahs to heroic back-to-back victories against New Zealand opposition, he was facing another uphill battle against the Blues.

The future of a coach in sport can be decided by the tiniest margins and moments that get lost in the sands of time. In 1990, Alex Ferguson was under severe pressure to keep his job at Manchester United after six First Division games without a victory.

He had arrived in 1986 to much fanfare but had delivered no trophies and the fans had run out of patience. Defeat to Nottingham Forest in the third round of the FA Cup would surely see Ferguson sacked. But an obscure player called Mark Robins scored the only goal in a 1-0 victory. United went on to win the cup, and by the time he retired 23 years later Ferguson had secured his place in the pantheon of the sport’s greatest coaches.