If there's something to fire a team back into form quick smart, it's surely the prospect of their season ending with a loss.
That's what faces all eight teams in this weekend's Super Rugby Pacific quarterfinals.
The Auckland-based Blues finished the regular season with 13 straight wins and wrapped up the top spot with a week to spare. Yet even with a home final on Saturday, if they have an off night and lose to the eighth-placed Highlanders, their season is over.
The quarterfinals take on the standard knock-out format; first plays eighth, second plays seventh and so on, with the top-four teams hosting matches. The highest-ranked teams will retain hosting rights throughout the finals series.
For the Queensland Reds, a quirk of fixture and standings has meant that after playing the powerhouse Crusaders in Christchurch to wrap up the regular season last Friday night — a 28-15 loss — their seventh-place finish puts them up against the second-placed Crusaders again in a quarterfinal. In Christchurch again. On Friday night. Again.
Pre-empting this would be the case, the Reds stayed in New Zealand for the week rather than returning to Brisbane and then flying back. Though a week of wet weather in the south island's Garden City was something they couldn't plan for.
"With COVID over the last couple of years, we haven't really had this time as a group, just to be in a tour environment," Queensland captain Tate McDermott said from Christchurch this week.
"For us, it's been awesome [staying in Christchurch].
"We've obviously spent a bit of time acclimatising to this wet weather over here. It's obviously a bit different to a sweaty old Ballymore."
McDermott said being in a genuine rugby city, where everyone knew the game was on Friday night, had been great to experience as part of the finals build-up, but the Reds were under no illusion about to the size of the task this weekend.
"No-one expects us to win, particularly over here," he said.
"But not too many teams get two cracks in consecutive weeks. We know we're underdogs and we're loving that title. No-one expects us to do anything."
Reds coach Brad Thorn was a mainstay of the Crusaders' forwards pack through the mid-2000s, but McDermott said their mentor had borrowed more from his Queensland State of Origin experiences to fire them up this week.
"It took us three tries last week to remember we were in Christchurch playing the Crusaders, and we can't do that again this weekend," McDermott admitted.
"We've said all year that we bring the physicality, but we've actually got to do that. Otherwise we'll be watching the rest of the finals from home."
New South Wales were a chance of finishing fifth after the Brumbies' shock loss to Moana Pasifika last weekend, but a Blues drop goal after the siren was a double dagger to the heart, delivering them both a 20-17 loss on the night and a sixth-placed finish. They face the third-placed Chiefs in Hamilton on Saturday afternoon.
"Oh, we're underdogs, that's for sure," Waratahs assistant coach Chris Whittaker said this week.
"The Chiefs are a good team, they're a very smart, streetwise team. They're very good at putting you off your game and knocking you off your support lines and that, so we've got to be prepared for that."
The Waratahs copped a hammering from the Chiefs in round 10, but followed that up with some quality performances: a 24-21 win over the Crusaders in Sydney and a 26-20 win over Moana Pasifika in Auckland, at the time their first win in New Zealand since 2015.
After that came a heartbreaking closing-stages loss to the Hurricanes, a 32-20 win over the Highlanders in Dunedin, and last week's three-point loss to the Blues.
They'll head into the clash with the Chiefs playing with a genuine freedom that comes with a complete lack of expectation.
"We've just grown in confidence with each game," Whittaker said.
"That Crusaders game, a win against a Kiwi team, and then you go over there and win against the Kiwi teams, so just gradually that confidence and that belief is growing.
"Nothing's impossible."
The fourth-placed Brumbies regained the mantle of Australia's premier team in this back half of the season — if indeed, they relinquished it this year at all — but lost a bit of their sheen last weekend in Auckland when they suffered a shock 32-22 loss to Moana Pasifika, the competition newcomers' second win of their maiden campaign.
It left Brumbies coach Dan McKellar with no doubt about their biggest failing on the night.
"Attitude," he said in Canberra this week, without hesitation.
"We didn't pay the opposition the respect they deserved, or maybe we gave them too much respect, I'm not sure.
"But the message this week will be the same as it has been the last six weeks: We've got to front up and roll up the sleeves and physically rip in."
The prospect of a first week has certainly sharpened the Brumbies up this week, but McKellar rightly points to a pretty strong body of work to know that his team is still in the right headspace to beat the fifth-placed Hurricanes on Saturday night.
"The week before, we were 20 seconds away from beating the team who are probably favourites to win the title, so we know that when we're at our best we'll compete with the best, and that's what we've got to be on Saturday night" he said.
And they have one distinct advantage over Queensland and New South Wales this week: the advantage of playing at home in the first week of the finals.
"Oh, it's huge," McKellar said.
"Travelling at the moment is probably more difficult than it ever has been, with flight cancellations and that sort of thing, so to be able to sleep in your own bed and not sit around airports dealing with delays, it's a huge bonus for us.
"We're really pleased to be in Canberra."
