NSW rugby coach Chris Hickey is unconcerned by his star-studded backline's lack of early season potency after the Waratahs slumped to a 27-6 Super 14 loss to the Stormers in Cape Town on Sunday.

A near Test-strength backline in which outside centre Tom Carter was the only non-international, couldn't find a way through a determined Stormers defence.

The visitors won a greater share of possession and forced the Stormers into making many more tackles, but their only points came from two Berrick Barnes penalties, one in each half.

Unable to capitalise on a promising and dominant first quarter, the Waratahs were given a lesson in opportunism by Springboks superstar Bryan Habana, who scored two tries.

The quicksilver winger charged down a Kurtley Beale clearance kick in the 43rd minute immediately following the restart from Barnes' second penalty, which had got the Waratahs within seven points.

The former Bulls star capped of a strong Super home debut for his new side by zipping past Drew Mitchell and Sosene Anesi to score his second from a scrum move.

After two rounds the Waratahs have managed just two tries, the lowest tally of any team in a tournament which has seen a marked increase in scoring.

"Obviously we would like to have scored some more (tries) tonight, but that's not a concern, NSW coach Chris Hickey told AAP.

"It's something that you keep working at. Scoring tries is only part of the equation. Credit to them they played defence very well.

"We we were reasonably happy with probably the first 30 minutes of the game "I thought that we had good control and created several opportunities in that period of time.....we just didn't finish off.

Hickey felt the tries either side of half-time to flanker Francois Louw and Habana were the turning points of the game and represented a huge momentum shift towards the Stormers.

There was some doubt over Louw's try from a forward drive as replays gave no conclusive evidence that the ball had been grounded.

"I thought the referee was in best position to make a decision on that," Hickey said.

"I only briefly saw the replay and it was difficult to see whether the television match official would have seen the ball grounded."

Hickey pinpointed defence and the set pieces as areas NSW needed to work on before their next assignment against the unbeaten Bulls.

"We probably felt that we didn't get the quality of possession we would have liked, particularly in regard to our lineout and the scrum was still a bit of a mystery," said Hickey whose team incurred several scrum penalties.

"Probably defensively I think we need to be much better at taking away the space of the opposition and actually pushing forward harder defensively."

Hickey nominated the performance of lock Kane Douglas in his run on debut as one of the positives for his side.

It was a significant game for two other NSW locks, with Will Caldwell becoming the Waratahs' most capped Super second-rower and South African Hendrik Roodt making his debut off the bench.

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