The NSW squad in 2016 looked vastly different to the one that won the competition in 2014, with a number of young players making their debut through the season.

However, the team is hopeful that those youngsters will find their feet in 2017 and propel the Waratahs back to the finals.

With Wallabies players returning to training this week, the likes of Jed Holloway have adopted leadership roles in their absence.

"It's a great period for us as coaches to put a lot of time into those guys, both from a tactical and technical point of view and on top of that for a lot of them around leadership growth," Waratahs forwards coach Cam Blades said.

"We're obviously seeing guys like Jed and a few of the other guys really take on leadership roles. They're our future as well, so we need to make sure we're not just focusing on the guys that are already there in that space, we've always got to be looking at the guys that are coming through and developing them."

Blades acknowledged that 2016 was a steep learning curve for a number of Waratahs forwards, but is looking forward to seeing the young pack thrive as they become more comfortable with playing at Super Rugby level.

"You obviously can never cover world class players leaving, like [Ben] Robinson and Tatafu [Polota-Nau], but to be fair, Ben didn't really play much of last season at all through injury and obviously then through retirement. So it gave us a really good opportunity to blood some young guys.

"I think pretty much to a man they all, as the season went on, grew and grew and as the season wore on some of them grew into Wallabies like Tom Robertson and other guys like Tolu Latu. So I'm really excited about the prospect of our growth this year; obviously we got off to a pretty slow start last year off the back of some of that inexperience, but hopefully this year we'll take a big step forward on that front."

Five-eighth Bernard Foley was impressed with the work that the squad has put in throughout December and is looking forward to seeing the team build on last year.

"Michael's [Hooper] had his first year of captaincy last year so he's really excited and knows how to approach the start of this year. But where we're going to add the most is in those guys who made their debut last year, who are really class players, they're going to reach their potential this year," Foley said.

"Guys like Jed Holloway, Jack Dempsey, even Andrew Kellaway, those guys are the guys who I can see really showing and flourishing this year and the potential they have to influence this squad and to fill those leadership voids is something that should be excited and that we're looking forward to."