Pat Lam admits that he is looking forward to his Bristol Bears’ side creating history by winning the biggest derby game in rugby and booking their place in their first-ever Premiership Final against Bath on Friday night.
Bristol have played Bath 14 times since returning to the Premiership and won 11, which Lam was quick to point out after they booked their semi-final place with a 52-26 demolition of Harlequins at Ashton Gate last week.
Lam says that denying Bath, the winners of the Premiership Rugby Cup and the European Challenge Cup, a historic treble doesn’t even more into his thinking instead, it is all about the Bears creating their own history.
“It is such a rivalry. It is probably the biggest derby in rugby because of the proximity of both teams and the passion of both sets of supporters. And this is the first ever play-off semi-final between the two. It just amps up another level.
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“The boys get up pretty easy for this game because of our fans, and that is driven by all of the local guys in the team. As a foreigner coming into Bristol, you pretty quickly learn the importance of what we represent.
“The motivation takes care of itself, as I continually say it is the easiest game for me as a coach. The other side of it is our game plan over the years. We have put some big scores on them and have had some tight games.
“As a coach, it requires players to be able to deliver the plan, which relies on them being up for it, so to be able to wrap it up and do it in every single game would be brilliant, but that is always the challenge.
“We are looking at how good would this be for Bristol to be in their first-ever final at this, probably more of the goal that we set at the start of the year. We have done stage one, which was getting here.
“For the fans, it is Bath v Bristol, then you add in what we are playing for, which is a place in the final, which for us is creating history straight away by winning this game.
“This is all about us and what we can achieve. Just getting to the final is not our goal. This is a big step of what we planned to do at the start of the season,” he said
Meanwhile, Lam acknowledges that arriving home at 2 am on Wednesday from an awards evening in London, on the week of such a big game, is hardly ideal preparation.
“It’s not ideal, but I understand the awards have got to happen. We were told we had to be there. I tried to push but was told there was a big fine, so I had to show up.
“I think that Michael Cheika took the Leicester boys out early, and then we went soon after that. Bath had to stay later, but at least we showed up,” he added.
