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How a one-page hotel note saved Pat Lam from the sack at Bristol
By Liam Heagney
Bristol boss Pat Lam has revisited the moment he realised he needed to radically alter his team’s playing style or potentially face the Ashton Gate sack… even though he was contracted through to the summer of 2028. It was last January when the Bears director of rugby slunk out of the Galway Sportsground having seen his team comfortably beaten 10-27 by Connacht, the Irish province he had coached to 2016 PRO12 title glory.
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The defeat left Bristol knocked out of the Investec Champions Cup at the group stage, an exit that didn’t go down well with fans who were already fed up with their team’s inconsistent Gallagher Premiership form where six of 11 matches had been lost.
Lam had an epiphany in his hotel room that night, immediately devising a radicalised style of play – written out on a single page of paper – to finesse the stuttering Bristol attack. They put eight tries on neighbouring rivals Bath in their next outing and went on to finish the season as the English league’s top try scorers and finishing just two points shy of making the end-of -season play-offs.
For Lam, coming out the other side of a dark winter rejuvenated his coaching. Sacked at the Super Rugby Blues in Auckland, he was lauded for transforming Irish minnows Connacht into a title-winning team.
His early years at Bristol were also tremendously exciting with numerous rugby fans of the belief they should have followed up their 2019/20 EPCR Challenge Cup title win by going on to become 2020/21 Gallagher Premiership champions. Instead, the remarkably blew a 28-0 lead in their home semi-final against Harlequins, the eventual title winners.
"Bristol will be crying out for it"@BrianODriscoll and @BenKay5 discuss how beneficial the upcoming break will be for @BristolBears to reset.
?? @ugomonye#GallagherPrem | #BRIvBAT pic.twitter.com/Vz7vtj8bcZ
— Rugby on TNT Sports (@rugbyontnt) January 27, 2024
That razzle dazzle attack diminished in the seasons that followed, leading Lam to his stark realisation last January that things had to immediately change or else. “It was huge,” he told RugbyPass about the consequences of his team’s European exit in Ireland.
“That was a dark day, going to my old club Connacht and getting knocked out. Because everyone was saying, ‘Are you alright, are you alright?’ – I don’t listen to much social media or look at much, but I knew then that people were probably calling for my head.
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“All I did was go back to my room and said, ‘Right, if I was to leave and I was to start again at a new club, what would I do?’ I put it all on one bit of paper and then came in and said, ‘This is what we are going to do!’
“So I had a good meeting with the coaches and said, ‘Going forward, all roads lead to this’. I caught up with the senior players and said, ‘This is what we are going to do’. It was all on one bit of paper and everyone had clarity.
“That was a non-negotiable, that this is the way we have got to play. There were no ifs or buts, we had got to get better. Everyone could contribute to it and add to it but the key question was, ‘Can we do this, can we do that, does it fit in this sheet? Great, let’s go then’.
“Effectively when it I did that it was like when I first went to Connacht, when I first went to Bristol – if I was going to be sacked or leave or whatever and go to another club and start the team, this is what I am going to do.
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“Very similar when I picked up the Baa-Baas for the first time. My number one thing I pride myself on was, ‘Bang, here’s the sheet and we are going to do it’. The timing of that (last January) was perfect because I wouldn’t change anything.
“As a club and on our journey we needed to go through some of the (adverse) things that we did because people are always thinking, ‘Should we do this, should we do that, well we tried some of this, we tried some of that and we can do it if we need to but 100 per cent, this is us, this is who we are and this is what we are going to be’.”
Bristol finished last season like a runaway train, the winning of six of their last seven league matches leaving them finishing just outside of the play-off spots.
This revitalisation has continued over the summer and fresh from a 38-35 home friendly win over Connacht last Friday to complete their pre-season, they are at Newcastle this Friday night looking to make a winning start to the 2024/25 Premiership.
“You could see the way we finished the season, smiles on faces, real enjoyment. Obviously, the way I contracted the boys (having a smaller squad), it suited them, suited the way they wanted to play too.
“So everything just came together there and everyone was really clear, and then pre-season has probably been the most enjoyable because we changed it all up from what we have done before – but it all comes back to that one-pager.”
Well that explains why they suddenly started to play to their potential for the second half of the season. And to think that he had the answer all the time.
Let's see whether they can keep it up this season.