Pat Lam defends Bristol's weakened squad after 49-12 Champions Cup hammering by Stormers

Bristol Bears director of rugby Pat Lam has defended his decision to send a heavily rotated squad to Cape Town for their Champions Cup opener, a match the Bears lost 49-12 to a formidable Stormers side, describing the scheduling as “probably our toughest draw ever over the first six games.”

Lam named the youngest and most inexperienced Bears team he had ever selected for the trip to South Africa, leaving a string of first-choice players at home. Ellis Genge was absent through injury, while Louis Rees-Zammit, Fitz Harding, and AJ MacGinty did not travel. England hooker Gabriel Oghre also missed the match after picking up a calf strain in a 30-7 Premiership defeat to Saracens, forcing Bristol to field their third and fourth-choice hookers, with Harry Thacker already sidelined with a neck injury.

The Champions Cup fixture in Cape Town falls between a demanding run of Premiership matches — including an away win over Sale Sharks (34-24), a home victory against Northampton Saints (41-26), the loss to Saracens, and upcoming home fixtures against Exeter and Leicester Tigers. Lam pointed to the decision to move the Champions Cup’s opening round from December to October as a key factor in his squad management calculations, with the long-haul return flight from South Africa leaving little recovery time before the Exeter fixture.

“No player can play six games on the trot,” Lam said. “All the teams are managing players for different reasons. We managed our squad last week and this week.”

Bristol kept pace with the Stormers for much of the contest, with the score sitting at 21-12 before four tries in the final 30 minutes blew the game open. Lam acknowledged the inexperience of his side in those closing stages but was positive about the development value of the trip.

“They scrapped well for a long period and put the Stormers under pressure, but we had a very inexperienced group on the field in the last 20 minutes,” he said. “A lot of these players have not been to South Africa, and they are buzzing.”

Lam added that most of the players who featured in Cape Town are expected to get further game time in the Premiership Cup in November, framing the South Africa trip as a meaningful step in their development rather than a throwaway fixture. The Bears’ overarching priority for the season remains the Premiership campaign, and Lam was clear that protecting his frontline squad for that competition drove the selection call.