WHEN Pat Lam began his coaching career back in 2003 as an assistant in Ian McGeechan’s Scotland set-up, there were no obvious signs that he would one day be a successful head coach in his own right. When he was sacked as head of the Blues in his native New Zealand in 2012, there were those who thought he was finished. Yet now, four years on, he has already steered Connacht to their most successful season, and is one game away from taking them back to Murrayfield for the PRO12 final.
Lam was at the national stadium last week, in fact, for a press conference with all four semi-finalists. It was a nostalgic visit in a sense, but also one which offered a foretaste of greater things to come: beat Glasgow Warriors at home tomorrow, and he will be taking his Connacht side back to Edinburgh for the final against Leinster or Ulster the following Saturday.
“I remember being in here for many of Geech’s team talks,” he said, sitting in a ground-floor room just off the players’ tunnel. “This is where I started my coaching career.
“I was talking to Geech just recently, actually, and he was congratulating me on the season so far. Some of the principles I learned with him are things I'm still doing. This was the beginning. This is where it all started.”
Auckland, home of the Blues, could have been where it all stopped. But Lam believes the seeds of his present success were sown during his time in that job, particularly towards the end, when he struggled most.
“The only thing I'm remembered for is my last year, when I got sacked. Everyone talks about that last year, but that year was the one I learned most from. You always talk about learning from your losses, and one of the things I said when I came out of that experience was that I would never take another job unless the team and the coaching was aligned with the organisation. If the organisation is not in a good place, and you're not working together, you're wasting your time.”
Lam played 34 times for Samoa and was also part of the team’s coaching set-up in 2012. The mind set there has stood him in good stead with Connacht, he believes, although he also insisted he has been helped by the fact that everyone at the province has a clear idea of what they want to achieve - and how they plan to achieve it.
“When I got the vision of Connacht Rugby it was easy to come and work through. I have to pay a big tribute to [former coach] Eric Elwood. He was stepping down and he gave me four or five weeks of transition, working as a fly on the wall, watching what he was doing and seeing what was going on.
“Probably the biggest thing about Connacht Rugby is understanding the people of the west of Ireland. It's about understanding the history. I did a bit of work there and one of the things that stood out strongly about the west-of-Ireland people is that they are tough people. That's something I always admire. When they get knocked down the keep coming back.
“Remember, I’ve come from a similar background with Samoa. We were underdogs, but we were able to generate a lot of belief through culture, relationships and the way we worked. That's all I wanted to add.”
He has added that belief, all right. But will that be enough to take him back to Murrayfield for the final? Tomorrow evening will tell.
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