Pro12 final: Pat Lam excited by ‘ultimate’ challenge against Leinster

Having dethroned the champions, you wouldn't have thought it could get any tougher. But if Connacht are to reach their holy grail of a first trophy in Saturday's Guinness Pro12 final at Murrayfield, they are going to have do it the toughest way imaginable.

"Without a doubt, it is the ultimate final for us, in the sense if you pick one team that we'd say would be the toughest challenge, it's Leinster, " said Pat Lam prior to his squad's afternoon session in an altogether more becalmed Sportsground yesterday. "Because we know them so well, and where a lot of those players are, a lot of our players aspire to be.

“They set the benchmark. If you want to test yourself against the best, and we talk to the boys constantly about their rugby education and playing at that highest level, and Test matches, here’s a chance to test ourselves as a team against one of the best in Europe over the last 10 years.”

Levels of intensity

This will be all the truer if Leinster achieve the same levels of intensity and accuracy they found against

Ulster

last Friday night.

“That’s the challenge,” said Lam. “And that’s what makes it exciting, because it’s like ‘right, that’s what the level is, that’s where we need to be at’. If we don’t have an understanding of how we need to play, and if we don’t bring the right preparation to it, we’ll get beaten off the park. But I think that’s what we’re excited by.”

As ever, he billed the match perfectly – “a pretty good attacking team versus a quality defensive team” – and added: “The weather forecast is great, but the biggest thing is around making sure that you make the most of the day. You can’t come off with regrets. To do that, you go back to what you do. It’s going to be a good game.”

Lam confirmed that there were no fresh injury concerns arising from Connacht’s semi-final win over Glasgow last Saturday. The buzz since has been unlike anything the squad have known, beginning with the pitch invasion.

“You don’t get many of those ones, and it was unbelievable,” said Lam. “The amazing thing was that I knew a lot of those people. That was the cool thing. These were people from my kids’ school, some from neighbours, people I have just seen around the place.”

There have been free lunches for Lam and the players alike. Lunch in Revive, for example, was on the house.

“For some reason, they won’t take my money,” he said. “There is a lot of goodwill and I know the boys have all seen the same sort of things, seen the flags. It’s great.”

Affordable

Lam himself has booked his family on Thursday-to-Monday flights, as they were more affordable. Among the thousands travelling to support Connacht, more than 200 are availing of a €140 return trip with a Galway bus company, Go Bus, to take the 10-hour-plus drive and boat trip to

Edinburgh

, sleeping aboard.

Yet, true to form, it took Lam five minutes to write the week’s schedule an hour after last Saturday’s 16-11 win. In all of this, he cited his experiences as a player with Samoa at the 1991 World Cup as “probably the biggest learning I’ve ever had”. Based in Wales for the pool stages, Samoa beat Wales in Cardiff, lost 9-3 to eventual winners Australia in Pontypool and then beat Argentina in Pontypridd.

They had no one attending their training sessions, stayed in three-star hotels, had limited media attention and had the utmost clarity in their jobs. Whereupon they went to Edinburgh for their quarter-final against Scotland.

“Everything changed,” Lam said. “Media, all sorts of activities. It was an unbelievably crazy week. We had families in hotels, more gear; we were staying in five-star hotels; the boys had buffet food. In the meantime, Ian McGeechan told me Scotland got themselves into Test match mode, no interruptions, and they came out and blitzed us in the quarter-final. It was a massive learning curve for me as I went on to captain teams.”

Yesterday marked the 16th birthday of Lam's son Joshua, and had he been born three days later, on the day Lam captained Northampton to their 2000 Heineken Cup final win over Munster by 9-8 at Twickenham, Lam would not have played.

Lam was also unable to train due to a shoulder injury, but again he sought to make it as normal as possible.

“It’s a great occasion,” he said. “We’re so pleased to be here and we’ve worked hard to be here, but we understand that if we’re going to win this thing, which is what we desperately want to do, we have to go about our business as normal as possible.”