Rebels coach Dave Wessels says he “presumes” the Waratahs will fulfil their commitment to a national rotation policy as NSW faces the increasingly real prospect of having to leave five Wallabies out of their side in a final round game that could decide their 2019 fate.

The Waratahs still have to rest five of their key players across the final two matches of the season as part of an agreement with the Wallabies to rotate certain Test players in the season.

Forwards Rob Simmons and Sekope Kepu are yet to miss any matches this year while Michael Hooper, Bernard Foley and Kurtley Beale need to sit out their second match this season.

The Waratahs have deliberately back-ended their rotations in a must-win run of games, where other teams have sidelined key players more sporadically.

With Friday night’s win keeping the Waratahs in finals contention, NSW are running out of time to fulfil the agreement.

The strategy could leave coach Daryl Gibson facing the need to leave that quintet out for a round 18 trip to Dunedin, regardless of whether they remain in the finals hunt.

All five of those players were influential on Friday night but Wessels said he expected that the Waratahs would satisfy the national request as their interstate rivals have.

“That’s up to them,” he said.

“All I know is we sat in a room and made an agreement about something so I’d presume that they’re going to stick to that.

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“We certainly will do our part.”

Gibson confirmed post-match that he wouldn’t be keeping anyone on the sideline against the Brumbies next week in Sydney, leaving NSW with the prospect of leaving five key players behind as they travel to New Zealand in round 18.

“No, it’s pretty clear, we’ve got a home game against the Brumbies and we’ve had a lot of continuity,” Gibson said.

“We put out the same team week on week and I thought tonight that showed at stages.

“I thought our 9, 10, 15 controlled the game well and for a high-kicking game, I thought we battled in that area well in terms of coming out on top.”

Gibson has stuck to a strategy that he settled on at the halfway point of the season as things became must-win for NSW.

Friday night’s win kept their slim finals hopes alive and Gibson said he couldn’t rob any of his players of the chance to face off against an Australian rival.

“I look at these games and I want to give the Australian players in our team the opportunity to play against their peers and I think that’s important. There’s a lot at at stake – including competition points but also an opportunity for them to go against their rivals.”

For the Rebels, Will Genia is still the biggest name yet to fulfil his resting requirements with two crunch games remaining.

Many of the Rebels Wallabies have missed matches with injury but Genia was sidelined for just one game, returning to Australia a week early from their South African tour.

Where the Waratahs could face a major conundrum in that final week, Wessels has a dilemma ahead of him now with two trans-Tasman match ups to round out the season and a finals spot on the line.

The Rebels will likely make the top eight with just one win from their final two matches against the Crusaders away and the Chiefs at home.

Travelling to Christchurch to play a dominant Crusaders side is one of the hardest trips in Super Rugby, while the Rebels would probably be favourites to beat the Chiefs at home.

Asked about his approach for the final two matches, Wessels said they didn’t have the luxury of putting all their eggs in that one basket.

“I don’t think we’ve got that luxury (of prioritising one game),” he said.

“I think we’ve got to go to Christchurch with the view that we want to win. We’ve got a game that can cause most teams in this comp trouble.

“As long as we play it consistently for 80 minutes and that’s obviously what we didn’t do tonight.

“Right now, I’m probably too frustrated about this game to talk too much about that but I’ve got some thinking to do in the next 24 hours.”