Steven Luatua has given up any hope of playing again for the All Blacks by signing a two-year contract extension with Bristol in the belief that the Bears will soon challenge for the Premiership title.
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The other end of the table will be on Bristol’s minds when they welcome Newcastle to Ashton Gate on Sunday. They sit two points above bottom-placed Falcons but such is the congestion below the top three that none of the other nine clubs went into this weekend’s matches, the season’s halfway point, with more victories than defeats.
“It was a pretty easy decision for me,” says the 27-year-old back rower Luatua, who joined Bristol last year after winning 15 caps for New Zealand. “The All Blacks came into it a little bit but there are no guarantees in international rugby. I wanted to do the best for my family and felt I had a lot more to give to Bristol.
“The Premiership is our goal. We have good players, a strong management team and a backer who is all for us and gives us support. We have wonderful fans and everything at the club is geared to success. We know that as players we have to do better on the field and when you look at the table, we can make the top six.”
Bristol are expecting another crowd in excess of 20,000 for the visit of Newcastle. They have won three of their five home league matches this season, losing the other two narrowly, but have lost all five away and picked up bonus points only at Wasps. The rousing victory over Leicester at the start of the month was followed last Saturday by a meek defeat at Sale.
“Our decision-making needs to be better,” says Luatua. “We need to be able to react if a game is turning a certain way: that is down to the leaders in the team and we let the rest down at Sale. We have to stick to our process whether we are 40 points up or down, as Exeter and Saracens have shown. It is about problem-solving on the go.”
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Not being bottom of the table approaching the halfway point would normally satisfy any club promoted from the Championship but Bristol’s head coach, Pat Lam, says he is frustrated at the start his Bears have made to their Premiership campaign.
“I believe we should be in a better place – we should have won the two home games we lost and we have left points behind,” he says. “Maybe that is me being a perfectionist but what excites me is where we are going to. We are improving every day and that comes through learning from knockbacks.
“It is not about money because everyone spends the same. It is about playing as a team: when we go off script and play as individuals, we are very average. You can have the best players in the world but if they are not a team it is a waste of time. We let ourselves down at Sale and we cannot afford to give any opportunities to Newcastle, who have had some good away wins this season.
“We want to inspire the local community through rugby success. I said at the beginning of the season that our aim was to finish in the top six because I did not want the mentality here to be about survival. Talk like that and you limit yourself, creating fear. I am positive.”
From Wednesday clubs will be free to speak to players who are coming out of contract. A no-deal Brexit could have implications for players classified as Europeans, such as South Africans and Pacific islanders, because their home countries have trade deals with the EU. “We are aware of it but it is not an issue at the moment,” says Lam. “Until we know for sure you cannot worry about it.”