Are rugby union side the NSW Waratahs the worst sporting franchise in Australia?

We start this column with a public apology. In January we wrote a piece headlined: Are the Melbourne Stars the worst sporting franchise in Australia?

The article went on to detail how the Stars were the perennial losers of the competition, having never won the title despite boasting rosters heavy with international T20 stars. On reflection, we need to retract our bold statement and crown a different franchise from a rival sport with that unwanted "worst franchise" tag.

Step right up the NSW Waratahs. The Tahs are successfully killing off another good coach – the highly regarded and likeable Darren Coleman – with an insipid start to the Super Rugby Pacific competition.

The sky blues sit in the bottom three, having won just one of six games. On Good Friday they lost at home to the Melbourne Rebels - a club on its knees financially and awaiting execution.

The honest-as-they-come Coleman didn't bother with the sugar coating. Displaying the body language of a broken man, he said: "It's on me. I am the one in charge. I've got to make sure they know what to do in certain times and there were times there that they didn’t look like they knew what to do."

Coleman's position is to be reviewed in the next month or so but he appears a dead man walking unless there's a dramatic shift in fortunes coupled with a heavy dose of benevolence from the powers that be. If he goes, he will join the long list of Tahs coaches who came, saw and were conquered during the Super Rugby era.

Only Michael Cheika has managed to extract anything meaningfully from this fast-fading franchise, engineering a one-point win in the 2014 final. Since then, it's pretty much been a catalogue of disaster.

And the worst part is NSW has a lost a generation of fans, sick of the constant losses and excuses and continually disappointed by the quality – or lack thereof – of the rugby played. I'm part of a rugby Facebook group where the game is usually defended with the sort of ferocity and frenzy associated with Vikings protecting their turf. Not anymore.

Rugby fans left outraged by Waratahs' showing in defeat to Rebels

Here's a small sample of their outrage following the Rebels defeat: "Imagine a casual fan flicking that on. Why can’t they catch?

"We will probably get the spin about how tough the Tahs draw has been etc but the fact is that the Tahs are historically the Super Rugby underachievers. Switch over to the Cowboys v Broncos game. Val Holmes just scored a screamer in tough conditions…light years ahead as far as entertainment goes."

Ouch, that last one really hurts. When you've got rusted on rugby people promoting the virtues of rugby league, you've got a massive problem.