Bristol boss Pat Lam hailed the impact of Semi Radradra, who pulled a piece of magic out the bag when it was needed most to cross for a try to earn a narrow 10-9 comeback victory over Sale Sharks in their Heineken Champions Cup last-16 first-leg tie.
Radradra’s form has been shaky this season since returning in December from knee surgery, but on Saturday his superb 40m solo try in the closing stages of an otherwise error-strewn game at the AJ Bell, was by far his biggest moment of 2021/22 campaign.
Attacking from a scrum near halfway, Radradra burst through midfield from a lovely short pass from Piers O’Conor and stepped his way past last defender Simon Hammersley to put his side ahead late on from a move perfected on the training paddock at the club’s £11.5m High Performance centre just this week.
Speaking after the match Bristol director of rugby Lam said: “We changed that move on Thursday. 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.”
Radradra started on the bench along with Bristol's other marquee man Charles Piutau with Lam explaining the squad had been hit with some illness early in the week and he wanted to start with the side that had trained together.
Lam labeled the Bears' first win away at Sale under his tenure as a ‘morale-booster’ after a difficult season in the league.
He 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[losing 39-22]. 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.”
Until Radradra scored it was a game lacking in quality and Lam admitted there was plenty to improve on.
Explaining the kick-centric style of play the Bears employed, Lam said: “Sale always tend to feed off our errors so we tried to be more conservative. While the calls we made were good some of our execution was off due to pass quality, kick quality, but saying that the fight from the boys was outstanding.
“It is only halftime in this tie, we are one point ahead and now we head home.”
Sale scored all their points through the boot of fly-half Rob du Preez from a trio of penalty kicks while Bristol stand-off Callum Sheedy also added five points with a penalty and conversion.
The two sides meet again at Ashton Gate on Friday night.
Meanwhile, Sale coach Alex Sanderson was frustrated with his side as they fell to a home defeat.
He said: “There is a great deal of frustration. 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 was quick to look forward to the return leg as his team hope to overturn the 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.”
