Pat Lam: 'In 20-odd years, this is the worst it’s been'

Pat Lam admitted Bristol’s injury crisis is the “worst” he has ever seen in more than 20 years of coaching after several more players went down in their 52-19 win at Newcastle.

Bristol moved above Exeter and into fourth in the Gallagher Prem but victory came at a cost as Joe Batley was withdrawn before kick-off and Rich Lane went off with a hamstring injury after scoring.

Gabriel Oghre jarred his knee and hobbled off while Lam fears Benjamin Grondona’s season is over with a pectoral problem, with Noah Heward feeling his hamstring and withdrawn as a precaution.

“They’ll all get a scan on Monday,” Bears director of rugby Lam said. “In the my whole years of coaching in 20-odd years, this is the worst it’s been.

“When you consider (Pedro) Rubiolo, (Viliame) Mata, (Steve) Luatua, (AJ) MacGinty, (Louis) Rees-Zammit, there’s so many players out.

“After pre-season I quietly had a word with the board and (owner) Steve Lansdown and said ‘I am that confident we have got a group ready to go’ and then boom, I spoke too soon with all the injuries.

“But in this life, it’s how you adapt, you can’t change it or control it. We’re going to keep fighting and it’s going to go all the way to the end of the season.”

Bristol ran in eight tries against the rock-bottom Red Bulls to claim an emphatic win in the race for a play-off place although Exeter can regain a top-four spot by winning at Gloucester on Sunday.

Lam’s side are now gearing up for a mammoth clash in a fortnight against sixth-placed Saracens, who are still in the hunt for the play-offs and have won their last nine meetings against Bristol.

“We’ve got four more matches to try and win,” Lam added. “The run-in to the Prem is always excellent, there’s something on all these games.

“Sarries at home, we haven’t beaten them for a few years now so it’s going to be a huge game for both teams. If they beat Leicester (on Saturday), they’ll be right there so it’s going to be massive.”

Newcastle, who announced on Friday that Dan McFarland will take over as head coach from next season, crashed to a 13th defeat from 14 matches in the top-flight to remain eight points adrift of safety.

But interim head coach Stephen Jones said: “Lots of that game I was happy with. Where we’ve got to learn and learn quickly is when we turn over, our ability to transition into defence.

“If you look at how that game finished, we had some 19-year-old boys on the park, we had a guy playing for the first time in the jersey, some really, really big moments for players.

“It just bodes well for the future of the club. Those are the green shoots, a lot of youngsters having good game time and good experience in the Prem.”