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Pat Lam's 'not ideal' preparation for the 'biggest derby in rugby'

Bristol boss Pat Lam (Photo by Seb Daly/Sportsfile via Getty Images)

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.

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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.

Fixture
Gallagher Premiership
Bath
34 - 20
Full-time
Bristol
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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.

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“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.

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“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.

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RedWarriors 3 hours ago
'Not a normal rugby team' - The Leinster flex that floored Jake White

I was actually at the match. Leinster were the outstanding team in the league stage. Leinster’s squad depth meant the Bulls could only nick a late win in Pretoria against an understrenght Leinster. Simple put, Leinster are significantly better this year compared to last. The Dublin match last year was a big win by Leinster. Yes they won by a point in the RDS three years ago but thats not relevant to yesterday.

As Leinster are such a dangerous team, it forces an opponent to focus on a strategy to undermine them and that way get their game on the pitch. Leinster allowed that against Northampton. But that was not going to happen again. The Bulls attack in last 10 minutes of the first half was as savage as anything in the URC this year. Yet Leinsters coaching plan repelled them allied to savage commitment from the players. The defense was outstanding, pressure at breakdown outstanding. Leinster did not win the European cup but arguably at their best this year no other European team could reach that height. They reached that yesterday. Leinster completely removed Bulls ability to hurt them.

And Croke Park….100 years ago the Brits fired machine guns into spectators injuring 100s and killing loads. No Irish team ever performs badly there. Same with Irish supporters. Opposition players might as well be Brit Tommies with machine guns.

I think a great Leinster team, played a great game plan, to the height of their power in a horrible stadium for opponents. If Bulls score before half time they were back in the match. They went down, but they went down fighting.

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