Bristol Bears reset big spending habits as Pat Lam puts his faith in ‘parents’

Bristol Bears – former Gallagher Premiership Galactics – will not spend up to next season’s new salary cap, director of rugby Pat Lam has revealed.

Bristol have confirmed 17 players will leave the club this summer and negotiations with several others are still ongoing and while “recruitment never sleeps”, Lam admitted the club is tightening its belt to be more streamlined ahead of 2024/ 25. Fijian international number eight Viliame ‘Bill’ Mata is the big arrival at Ashton Gate, but heading the other way are internationals like Callum Sheedy, prop Kyle Sinckler and backrower Magnus Bradbury, joining Cardiff, Toulon and Edinburgh respectively.

READ MORE: Bristol Bears confirm 17 players to leave, with some negotiations still ongoing

Lam said: “I always say that recruitment never sleeps, but eventually we reset, we go with a smaller team, there are fewer games, but I also find it very difficult at the moment that I can’t promise everyone a game. time. You look at some of the players that are leaving (like Dan Thomas, Ed Holmes and Piers O’Conor) they deserve to play and it just doesn’t feel right that we have the number of players we have and I can’t promise them playing time due to competition.

“For us as a group, we are really focusing on youth, resetting with the right and good advice of senior leaders like Steven Luatua, Yann Thomas, Ellis Genge, AJ MacGinty, even Harry Randall now. If you look at all of them and Jake Heenan, these guys are very experienced, but the other thing they have in common is that they’re all dads now, and that’s huge, because the guys are all team guys, but when you’ve guys who are fathers tend to be more mentors, taking care of the younger ones, so like an extension of fatherhood, if you will.

In the past, thanks to the backing of billionaire owner Steve Lansdown, Bristol have squeezed every penny out of their salary cap, bringing in the likes of Semi Radradra and Charles Piutau, while also adding Leicester Tigers captain Ellis Genge and his England international. teammate Sinckler. But of that quartet, only Bristolian Genge will remain next season despite his salary cap rising from £5m to £6.4m.

Lam continued: “We have a very, very exciting group of young players coming through and we will definitely be a smaller team. Even at this stage we will not spend up to the limit. I’ve always said I don’t necessarily believe in the salary cap because I think CFOs or owners should be in charge.

“I don’t think we’ll even get to £5m on the cap and that’s fine. We will make sure we have a very good team.”

Lam, who led Connacht to victory in the Pro12 against much better-funded sides like Leinster and Munster, has always said clubs should live within their means as best they can, and yet the latest set of accounts of at Bristol report that they have recorded a loss. of £4,554,814 for the 2022-23 season.

Lam said it’s not Lansdown cutting funding from the Bears, but the fact that other revenue streams the club relies on are drying up. He said: “Steve’s money is still there but the money that isn’t is TNT’s, the broadcast deal has gone down. I think central funding has gone down in some things as well. So why should they put more? When we started this project, we said we wanted him to invest less. I did this until COVID. Every year his contribution went down and suddenly he invested a lot of money for all of us to keep our jobs during COVID with 100% salary, all of it. He invested a lot to take care of the club. Now the people at the top of the club have to make sure we can run this team wisely.”