Michael Cheika spoke to the media from the club’s Oval Park training ground on Tuesday ahead of a return to action in the Gallagher Premiership this weekend.

The side travel away to Bristol Bears on Sunday after a weekend without a game, following defeat in the Investec Champions Cup Round of 16, and ahead of the leage fixture at Ashton Gate, the Head Coach was quizzed on his squad’s evolution of play, the week off after being knocked out of Europe, injury status of some big names and much more.

LAST WEEKEND

“We took a few days off after the European game then we went over some fundamental things that we thought would be important leading into the end of the season.”

“We had a big focus on those and similarly we have looked at those fundamentals at the start of this week in the lead up to the game. I’ve been pretty happy with the block and what the squad has been able to achieve.”

FOCUS AREAS

“We’ve been looking to tie up the work we’ve done up until now. We’ve done a lot of work in how we have been trying to turn the team around from the very start and you put in a lot of work over the season, however you’ve planned it out."

“In the scenario that we’re in, you want to tie everything all together and make it mean something. Not ‘oh we did some work at the start, now we’ll do this, now we’ll do that’, you have to turn it into a coherent story that runs through to the end of the season.”

“I feel like I laid out a plan considering the whole nature of this season, the one year – it may have been different if I had been doing it for a longer term and I wanted to tie those things up going into the run in.”

EVOLUTION OF SQUAD

“The evolution of how we play is extremely important. What you decide to leave behind, whether as a player or a coach and you’re moving on or going elsewhere, what you leave behind is extremely important.

“How you treat the people and how you respect the people who are going to be here going forward. How passionate you are about winning.”

“For the players, the fans, everyone who has invested in you - if nothing else it’s actually more important as you feel you are letting people down by leaving. I feel like, leaving the legacy is part of doing the right thing in the time itself.”

“When you do the right thing, that will help you for this year, that will help you for next year. I try to do that in everything we do. From a player perspective, the things that we are doing now I hope will be appreciated by the next coaches in here.”

INJURY UPDATES

“George [Martin], you can almost put a line through him for the rest of the season. It doesn’t look like he’s going to come back anytime soon.”

“Ollie [Chessum] is different. He’s been involved these last few weeks, started to get a little bit more involved today. I think off the back of what we see tomorrow we’ll get a picture of whether he will be available for this week.”

“That is the same with Julián Montoya and with Tommy Reffell, although he’s probably the most active in training of all of them.”

REFLECTING ON LAST MEETING WITH BRISTOL

“I don’t know if reflection is the word – we didn’t play well, they did and the scoreline showed it. We got a few scores in that game but we have away way too many.”

“We’ve worked hard since then – it was probably the start for us of seeing the main things in defence that we wanted to improve.”

“We had to go through change and while going through it you’re more up and down in what you’re doing. These last few weeks we started to get a handle on it – although we gave away a couple of tries in Glasgow, I thought we were much more aggressive in defence. We have to tie up a few more loose ends around tightening our defence after kicks. Apart from that, I feel we have tightened ourselves up since then.”

“We know they’re going to run the ball a bit but I think we can take that game at home as good motivation.”

CURRENT STANDINGS IN THE LEAGUE

“We’ve probably missed a couple of opportunities to be higher up the ladder. When I say a couple, I literally mean one or two that we really could have nailed and didn’t take points.”

“I feel good because I know we’ve done a lot of work to prepare. There’s no good time to become consistent there’s just the time you become consistent, you don’t have to wait for it, it’s about doing it now or doing it when you feel capable of doing it, if you’ve done the work and you’re confident in yourself.”

CHANGING APPROACH TO PLAY BRISTOL

“No, not really [changing our approach]. You apply yourself more to the principles that you establish. You can’t change your defence week in, week out. Since the break we had a few more ideas we wanted to bring in, especially since David Kidwell joined us. I feel that’s been coming along, we’ve been doing a certain type of training that will help that and it’s a new way of thinking for the team here.”

“We don’t need to change anything in particular; we just need to apply ourselves at all times as we know they can run from all over the place and do well in the tight exchange. We can’t just dismiss the tight exchanges because they like to run, if anything it’s the other way around - we need to dominate the tight exchange in order to see them off.

TARGET FINISH IN THE LEAGUE

“No idea mate. The one thing I know is this: win every game and we’re in.”