Champions Cup: Pat Lam hails Bristol’s ‘morale-booster’ of a performance against Sale

David Skippers

10 Apr 2022 8:48 AM

Bristol director of rugby Pat Lam hailed a “morale-booster” of a performance after Semi Radradra crossed for the match-winning try in a narrow 10-9 victory over Sale in Saturday’s Champions Cup round-of-16 first-leg tie at the AJ Bell Stadium.

Sale raced into a 6-0 lead courtesy of two Rob du Preez penalties inside the opening 10 minutes before Callum Sheedy reduced the deficit when he added a three-pointer off the kicking tee.

Radradra saves the day for Bristol

The rest of the match was an error-ridden encounter with both sides battling on attack before Radradra came off the replacements bench to score the crucial try in the 70th minute and Sheedy added the extras to give the visitors a crucial 10-6 lead.

Du Preez added another penalty in the game’s dying moments but Bristol held on to clinch the narrowest of victories.

Lam said: “It’s a morale-booster in the sense that we have been up here five times during my time here and haven’t won.

“It’s a tough place to come. You know you’re in for a physical battle and you have to meet that head on. That’s what I’m most pleased about for the boys.

“We were gutted after that Northampton game. The boys felt ‘that’s not us’, worked hard on it this week and it was a big effort to keep Sale out all game.”

He was particularly delighted with the move that resulted in Radradra crossing for the match-winning score.

“We changed that move on Thursday,” he added. “We thought ‘let’s just adjust this and it’ll be a perfect line for Semi to run onto’, and they ran it perfectly.

“He would be the first to admit he hasn’t been firing on all cylinders, but some of the stuff he does in games creates so many opportunities.

“It was good to see him open up and remind people what he does have.”

Meanwhile, Sale boss Alex Sanderson was left frustrated with his side’s performance.

“There is a great deal of frustration,” he said. “Bristol were brilliant tactically, they bored us off, but it wasn’t a brilliant spectacle of free-flowing championship rugby. It was a tactic that worked and we have got to be better.

“The teams that do really well in this competition do the simple things really well, we need to do more of the simple things better.”

But Sanderson is looking forward to the return leg as his team are determined to overturn their single-point deficit.

He added: “That is the beauty of a double header, we get to exorcise any frustration next week so roll on Friday. I wish we could play it again tomorrow.

“It wasn’t a fair representation of how we train, how we play or what we want to showcase in terms of the talent we have. We have got six days to put it right.”

Bristol Pat Lam