Taking nothing for granted, Michael Cheika says his NSW Waratahs must find another gear to beat the Highlanders on Sunday and clinch a precious Super Rugby home final.

Already guaranteed a playoff spot after locking up the Australian conference with a club-record-equalling five straight victories, the Waratahs still need to win one of their remaining two games to be sure of hosting a semi-final at Allianz Stadium.

Little wonder the famously guarded coach wasn’t prepared on Tuesday to revise his long-stated goal of a top-two finish and start targeting the minor premiership.

“Our first objective is just to get to our goal,” Cheika said.

“I don’t need to keep ordering a bigger-sized suit as I keep eating sandwiches and I don’t think it’s fair for me to start changing the target for players either.

“Our goals have been set from early in the season around other things and we haven’t attained those yet.”

The Waratahs are unbeaten at home this campaign, but Cheika insists the fourth-placed Highlanders are well capable of crashing the party and leaving his side under pressure to topple the Queensland Reds in Brisbane to avoid a dreaded away final.

“They’re equal top of the New Zealand conference,” he said.

“And that’s no mean feat because that’s a very, very strong conference. You can see by the way all their teams are in contention.

“They have great attacking power and they’re hard workers.

“What we’ve got to do is make sure we give them plenty to deal with so we can take their minds off their own game.

“We’ve got to work as hard as we’ve ever worked before, because at the end of the day we’re striving to achieve something and to do that you’ve got to make sacrifices.

“On Sunday, it’s probably the game I’m going to ask the team to make the biggest sacrifices of the season so far.

“If we want to go further in the competition, we need to discover how to do that at an even higher intensity, not stay where have been for the season so far.”