Rugby Lam: Turnovers and missed tackles are two key areas we must improve on
BRISTOL Bears’ opening two defeats of the 2021-22 Premiership season has led to a degree of reflection at the High Performance Centre at Abbots Leigh.
Not that director of rugby Pat Lam has any concerns about the mental strength and attitude of his players, and he admits that the Bears have gone through their usual processes in trying to address the dodgy start as opposed to any knee-jerk reactions.
Injuries and star absentees such as Semi Radradra and Kyle Sinckler (who returns against Bath tonight) have also slightly mitigated the impact of the results in Lam’s own mind, given it’s hard to be at your best when your best players aren’t on the field.
But with a 70-17 aggregate record from their matches against Saracens and Wasps, clearly solutions are there to be found and, while admitting that one or two players haven’t been performing close to their maximum, what fundamentally lies at the heart of the Bears disappointing start are relatively straightforward to rectify - turnovers and missed tackles.
Against Sarries in the season opener, the Bears surrendered possession 17 times, seven more than the opposition, a trend that continued at Wasps last Saturday with the ball given up on 20 occasions, double that of the hosts.
In defence, 28 missed tackles contributed to their 26-9 defeat followed by 31 at the Coventry Building Society Arena. All adding up to the alarming and avoidable amount of points conceded over the 160 minutes across both games.
“When I sit back and look at both games, if you look at the outcome and the scores, it doesn’t look great,” said Lam. “But when you actually look at the detail, and we have as a team, we had opportunities to win.
“But at this stage the thing that is hurting us the most is the amount of turnovers we’ve got and our discipline. For us, as a team, there are a few players not on top of their game but I have full confidence that will come. If anything, we found out last season it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish.
“There are key markers that we look at and the ones that are really standing out are missed tackles and turnovers. So I always look at things around the structure of our game and where I’d be more concerned would be if our structure wasn’t giving us more opportunities.
“We look at defence - is there a system error or is it a missed tackle? At the end of the day, if a guy misses a tackle, he misses a tackle and it’s up to him to fix. Likewise, if we’re dropping balls and not being accurate at breakdowns.
“They’re all fixable things. What’s more difficult if you have a game where you’ve had no chance, no opportunities and nothing is happening. That’s why I’m confident we’re not too far away.”
Those technical glitches, coupled with the reassurance they are still creating point-scoring opportunities, are ultimately at the heart of why Lam isn’t pressing the panic button just yet, nor is he a coach prone to that sort of reactionary behaviour with plenty of games still to be played and situations to develop.
Tonight’s West Country derby takes on a significance beyond trying to reverse the trend of defeats, with Bristol having won all but one of their last seven matches against Bath. But the gravitas of the fixture from a supporter point of view, and the potential pressure that then adds to an under-performing team, is probably why Lam chose to play down its importance outside of the opportunity to claim a victory.
“It’s another game, it’s round three,” added Lam. “Both teams are keen to play well. We’ve had the upper hand on Bath and I know that’s something they’ll want to change and it looks like it’s going to be close, if not a sell-out game.
“So it’s going to be a great occasion and an occasion to perform better, and that’s what we’re going to try and do. Every time we play Bath, the same things are said and that won’t change, what I’ve always focused on is it’s a game of rugby for us to get our jobs done and to play as well as we can as a team.”