Dylan Pietsch was rewarded on Tuesday night for a standout Super Rugby Pacific year during a floundering Waratahs' campaign, finishing equal second in the state's best player award.

The New South Wales left winger finished on 161 points in the live count alongside halfback Jake Gordon, but the pair though fell behind the eventual Matt Burke Cup winner, blindside flanker Will Swinton on 219 points.

"I came from the back fence the last couple of rounds," Pietsch joked.

The polling that is voted upon by their peers has boosted the one-time junior flanker's bid to win a spot in Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt's first Test side against Wales in Sydney next month.

Pietsch had appeared to be a part of the plans for former Test coach Eddie Jones last year after the Wiradjuri man was included in the Australian squad for union's Bledisloe Cup against New Zealand and the Rugby Championship in which also involved South Africa and Argentina.

But Pietsch's historic pleas to become the 15th Indigenous man to be represent the Wallabies was ignored, instead listed as one of the reserves for Australia's final World Cup squad.

But the 2021 rugby sevens Olympian in Tokyo playing just his third season of Super Rugby bounced back to star for a Waratahs side that finished 12th, and clear last, with just two victories from 14 appearances behind next worst, Moana Pasifika, on four victories.

Pietsch was satisfied but downplayed his own personal performance amid a season not to celebrate about.

"I'll take it – that was good," Pietsch said.

"It was a bit unexpected to finish so high (in the count)."

While he only crossed for the line four times across his 12 matches that included a double during the season opener against Queensland in Brisbane, the 26-year-old plays a more unique wing role that is not characterised solely by the number of tries he scores.

After growing up playing on the fringes of rucks in set plays throughout Pietsch's acclaimed schoolboy days, the hybrid utility often gives a chop out to the forwards in the backline, and he frequently amasses a number of tackle busts and offloads balls back into his inside backs to run.

It's very much about being a two-in-one player that could easily be asked to join in set pieces, including scrums and lineouts, while making substitutions off the bench for a reserve back easier.

"I always felt whenever I get the most touches on the ball that I can influence the game a lot better," Pietsch said.

"As it is traditional (on the wing) to wait for the ball, it's also not that I am impatient but I like to create extra numbers (in the contest) where I can.

"Ball-carrying is still my best thing, so I always want to do more of that.

"In my first year, I definitely did not come off my wing – but I kind of decided that I didn't want to do that anymore and I thought 'how can I play numbers and do that for the team?'.

"Obviously, I have a fair bit to go in that as well, but hopefully I keep doing more of that."

But Pietsch is still very much doing all the standard things a coach expects from a winger.

Except the balls are finding his side of the field like a team that earned the wooden spoon.

The Randwick flyer from Leeton on Wiradjuri Country shows a sharp turn of speed beyond most natural-born flankers when making a quick break from a small gap in the defence.

But also like modern-day wingers that rather run through than side step opponents, Pietsch is capable of fending off and brushing aside tacklers on his way to the line in arguably the best intra-domestic competition in the world.

"Even in our season review stuff, speaking to DC (coach Darren Coleman), who's obviously leaving, he was reflecting on when I first came and obviously, I was very raw and didn't know what I was doing (on the wing), but now I am kind of leading the back field and I have taken advantage of that," Pietsch said.

"I think there's been a lot of growth in my game and now I think there's a lot more to come."

But Pietsch could not entirely put a finger on what went wrong in another wasted year of botched team performances.

Despite the wealth of resources in New South Wales, the Waratahs once again failed to live up to high expectations and across 28 seasons the centrepiece of Australian rugby have claimed just a single a Super Rugby title in 2014.

The Tahs did lose by six points or less five times and only won once by a similar narrow margin, but they also lost by 15 or more points on six occasions in a campaign full of hope and humiliation.

"It's hard when you've had a long preseason," Pietsch said.

"I think that came in as a factor when we had a lot of injuries and bad luck like that, and hopefully that turns around (next year).

"It's tough when you work so hard every day and you come out and lose four or five games on the trot by like three or four points.

"That does drain you and that is something we have to work on in backend of games.

"I think we may have made some of the most linebreaks, but ended up fizzling out.

"We've got good talent in creating those linebreaks, but team cohesion wasn't that great on the field then when you're not finishing those tries and we're not rushing ourselves."

While disappointed the Waratahs were one of just four teams that were unable to even make the competition's quarter-finals, Pietsch could not return to Country for a rest including his cultural need to camp and fish, and to take personal reflection on his ongoing life journey.

Rugby Australia even prevented Pietsch returning to club games in the state's Shute Shield to enjoy grassroots rugby.

Pietsch was instead invited to join his standout Waratahs teammates and the best performer from the Western Force to start planning out the Wallabies Test itinerary with Schmidt in a Sydney central training hub.

"I don't know if I will get home to be fair," Pietsch said, dwelling on his chances of breaking into the Wallabies this year.

"Right at the moment, I don't know what's happening."

Prospective Wallabies players from the ACT Brumbies, Queensland Reds and Melbourne Rebels were preoccupied over the past fortnight with their finals' fixtures in the climaxing Super Rugby Pacific finish.

The final training squad for the next month could be announced as early as Friday.

Pietsch was told earlier this year that he may remain in contention to play for the Australian rugby sevens side at this year's Paris Olympic Games.

But the fact the utility sevens veteran was not called up to play pre-Olympic fixtures in Fiji unlike Sydney Roosters' NRL-bound Mark Nawaqanitawase of the Waratahs, but offered from Schmidt specific one-on-one tuition indicates what direction Pietsch is heading this year.

"It was so detailed the training and Joe's really hands on as a coach," Pietsch said.

"It was good just to go through some clips to break down our game and how we can better in certain situations."

Schmidt was appointed earlier this year to succeed Jones after the failure to propel Australia out of the group stages and into the quarter-finals for the first time in its proud 36-year Rugby World Cup history.

Pietsch has backed the New Zealander to turn rugby union's fortunes in Australia following a stellar coaching career back in Aotearoa domestically and also in Ireland, including that country's national side from 2013 to 2019.

"Wherever he has gone, he has sort of turned things around and earned success," he said.

"So it's really cool to sit down and listen to him because he's really positive, very constructive kind of guy.

"Sometimes you need that and hopefully he is a breath of fresh air for the rest of the blokes."