Semi leads by example says Lam... and what a towering example that is for all
SEMI Radradra has turned the heat on his fellow Bristol players. The Fiji centre was the driving force behind a sauna which has been installed in the club’s state-of-the-art training facility on the edge of the city which opened last year. The Bears may be backed by the Premiership’s wealthiest owner, Steve Lansdown, but they operate within a budget and when Radradra and his colleagues were told there was no money left over from £11.5m for a sauna, they had a whip round.
“Semi was a big driver for the sauna,” said Pat Lam, below right, Bristol’s director of rugby. “I said it was not in our budget, so the players paid for it themselves. Now we have a nice flash sauna and Semi is in there all the time: he must think it is Fiji away from home.”
Radradra gave Bristol a boost by returning from a two-month lay-off last weekend to prove his fitness for today’s Heineken Champions Cup last 16 clash against Bordeaux-Begles, the club he joined from last year, at Stade Chaban-Delmas, and he is joined in the side by the former New Zealand fullback Charles Piutau.
“Semi is the ultimate professional who has changed so many habits at the club, especially in the backs,” said Lam, whose nephew, Ben, will be on the left wing for Bordeaux-Begles. “They used to meander in to training and stand around before the weight session which started at 10.30. Then Semi turned up and put in early extras so now they start 15 minutes before.
“As a coach, that is what you want. We knew what we were getting as a player in Semi, but when others see the way he trains and prepares, it encourages them. Standards at the club are getting higher and higher and everyone knows they have to step up to the plate and improve, including me.”
Bristol have won five of their last six matches in France in Europe, all in the Challenge Cup, and with captain Seven Luatua absent with a leg injury, Lam has picked three second rows in his back five and partnered Radradra with Alapati Leiua to give the Bears a powerful
midfield. “We know how danger ous they are,” said Lam. “We beat them in the Challenge Cup last season, afte extra-time, but this is Champions Cup football. We have the chance to play in a quarter-final for the first time and a home. That means meeting the challenge and getting the job done.”
From the first day Lam walked into the club’s old training ground four years ago, he has talked about makin Bristol one of the leading forces in Europe. He was mocked when he said after gaining promotion to the Premiership that his goal was not survive but making the Champions Cup, but he is taken seriously now.
“I knew all our supporters would b a year behind us,” he said. “You can engage on Twitter with fans or hold Q&As, but the only thing people will
notice is what you do on the pitch. You will not please everybody, but you have to do what you say you will.
“When I arrived here, people said you had to get promoted and then it would be about survival, but I made it very clear where we were heading. We benchmarked everything, and while we won 21 of our 22 games in the Championship, we never looked at a game and its winning margin but asked whether the performance was good enough for the Champions Cup.
“The answer was always no, so it was about improving and individuals were tasked with that. We never got carried away and we don’t now. We have had massive growth because we keep challenging the players and we know we can get better. At the beginning it was about putting stars on the jersey but now we want to be playing the big teams who have won the Champions Cup, not surviving in the Premiership. We are not there yet, but we are in the competition for the first time in a long while and we have put ourselves in the best position at this stage of our development to give it a good crack this weekend.”
Bristol lead the Premiership by 12 points with seven rounds to go and are 15 ahead of third-placed Sale.
They made the play-offs last season, but fighting on two fronts proved too much in a campaign that ended with a series of midweek fixtures and they settled for the Challenge Cup.
“Playing in midweek made it difficult last season,” said Lam. “I told the players that if you fight on two fronts you have to do well domestically. We are in the best possible place in the Premiership and that has given us breathing space to fully focus on Europe.
“It is different if you are near the bottom when there is relegation. Effort has been our model this season and that is what has got us here.”
While it has largely been an upward graph for Bristol this season, their first Champions Cup match for 12 years saw them ship 51 points to Clermont Auvergne at Ashton Gate in December, although they did score five tries in reply. They were without Radradra and Charles Piutau that afternoon while Callum Sheedy, the captain today in Luatua’s absence, Kyle Sinckler, Ben Earl and Max Malins were making their first appearances of the season after returning from international duty.
“The Champions Cup is a step up in that you are playing teams of high quality, but as I have told the guys, it is still a game of rugby and about getting your jobs right,” said Lam. “We did not that day and we got punished. It showed that if you get things wrong, there are consequences. We have to make sure that we fire our shots as the Bears on both sides of the ball on Sunday and come away proud of the performance.”
The Six Nations and recent rounds of the Premiership have highlighted the importance of discipline with red cards proliferating, especially for challenges that involve contact with an opponent’s head. Bristol are among the four Premiership clubs who have not had a player sent off this season and Lam backs the crackdown.
“It is an adjustment and that takes time,” he said. “We are all talking about it and that is a good thing because player safety is what is most important. It will get better, as it did with previous crackdowns on tip tackles and taking out a player in the air. Discipline will be vital on Sunday and we have talked about it because we have been on the wrong side of the penalty count in our last few games. There will be no margin for error.”