Pat Lam interview: 'I tell my players it's a straight choice when Billy Vunipola's running at you: are you going to fight or take flight?'

“I am a big fan of the Rocky movies,” Pat Lam, Bristol’s director of rugby, says with a grin. “He came from humble beginnings, got the flash things but went back to the old way.”

Right now Bristol have the flashiest stadium in Ashton Gate, the flashiest training ground in their sparkling new high-performance centre and the flashiest players after the summer signings of Semi Radradra and Kyle Sinckler who will spearhead their play-off push starting on Saturday against Saracens.

Of course, it is easy to be cynical about the Bears. To adapt the famous Mrs Merton quote to Radradra and Sinckler, what first attracted you to billionaire Steve Lansdown’s Bristol? At every turn at the £11.5 million high-performance centre – Lam refuses to call it a training ground – you are greeted by a wall adorned with an inspirational quote. Not since Boy George was in his 80s pomp has a man mentioned culture as much as Lam.

Yet Lam, a proud Samoan, sincerely believes in every word he utters. The quotes are not faddish gimmicks but statements of intent personally written by Lam or another member of Bristol’s staff. If you were to crudely categorise directors of rugby then Saracens’ Mark McCall and Northampton’s Chris Boyd are the quiet, cerebral types. Sale’s Steve Diamond and Rob Baxter, of Exeter, come from a blue-collar school of hard knocks. Lam belongs in his own bracket: a missionary whose evangelical zeal sweeps everyone along with him.

For those who question whether he could accomplish his lofty goal of winning the Champions Cup without English rugby’s fattest cheque book, one need only look at what he achieved at Connacht. Among the poorest Pro12 teams, Lam could not buy superstars, instead he created them, turning the likes of Bundee Aki and Robbie Henshaw into established Ireland internationals. In the same year that Leicester won the Premier League, Connacht captured the Pro12 title working off an even greater disparity in resources. It remains Lam’s defining achievement - so far - but to truly understand the man you need to go back to the darkest moment of his coaching career.

Lam had taken over as head coach of his hometown Auckland Blues in 2009. Within two years, he had taken the Blues to a fourth-place Super Rugby finish, earning a first home play-off since 2003. But in 2012, results dipped. All coaches are questioned when losses start mounting, but in Lam’s case the doubts were expressed in racial terms with a Samoan coaching a largely Maori and Islander squad.

For Lam, one of the toughest players to ever grace the Premiership with Newcastle and Northampton, the racist abuse was water off a duck’s back. “At a press conference, I was asked a question about Pacific Islanders only playing certain positions or not being able to coach,” Lam said. “I just laughed at it.” Then someone asked whether it affected his parents. At this point, Lam got “emotional”. Tears started to well. And of course this was used as further evidence for his supposed unsuitability to the role. He left the Blues at the end of season.

Reflecting on that press conference now, Lam says: “The problem was my parents who had been through the struggle and knew the struggle. I told them I am not bothered by it, but they listen to that stuff. That’s when I got emotional because I was thinking about my dad and no one knows what my dad’s journey has been like. No one knew his struggle.”

This is his struggle. Aged 19, Sonny Lam was sent on a boat to New Zealand to find his father [also Patrick] that he had not seen since he was an infant. Sonny found him and quickly picked up his trade as a carpenter. He then became a kitchen assistant for Air New Zealand, but had higher aspirations. “He decided, 'I want to become one of the bosses',” Lam said. “He trained at night school. He was not around much when I was younger and it was not until later that I realised that he was working two jobs and doing night school. He eventually became one of the best pastry chefs in the country and one of the bosses up there.”

As part of his retirement package, Sonny, who turns 80 in February, gets an annual free flight from Air New Zealand, although all travel plans are currently on hold because of Covid-19. “He worked and worked and worked,” Lam said. “When people say these people [Islanders] can’t do this or can’t do that, that’s when I think of his story. I try to put myself in his shoes and imagine if I did not have my parents.”

This is where Lam’s prodigious work ethic comes from and why he has self-funded many of his personal development opportunities, particularly in the field of sports psychology. So while the coach with the Premiership’s richest owner may appear to have an easy ride, make no mistake; Lam was forged in adversity.

“When I turned 50, people were saying, ‘jeez, how do you feel to be 50?’ and I said I felt I was in the best place of my life,” Lam said. “At 35-36 I had won two titles as a coach and I thought I was great but now I look back and know I was terrible because I had not been through some of those tough experiences. I have learnt along the way that you go through tough times but you come out the other end and you realise you feel better for it. You know tough times don’t last. All these quotes are true when you live it. I say to the players it is a straight choice when you have Billy Vunipola running at you: are you going to fight or are you going to take flight. Those are the decisions you have to take in life.”