Big injury blows for Saints during Bristol defeat

Chris Boyd confirmed that Hobbs-Awoyemi faces a long absence after snapping his Achilles, while another summer arrival, Auterac, is also set for a spell on the sidelines.

With Alex Waller still on his way back from his own Achilles problem, Saints have just one senior loosehead, Francois van Wyk, in their squad.

They could call upon youngster Manny Iyogun, but it looks likely they will now try to bring in injury cover ahead of a league game at Leicester on Sunday and the Champions Cup quarter-final at Exeter on September 20.

After Saints' 47-10 defeat at Bristol, Boyd said: "It looks like Danny Hobbs has snapped his Achilles tendon so that will be a long, long break for him.

"Nick Auterac came on at loosehead and he's done an adductor or a groin so that actually only leaves us with one loosehead so we're going to have to find someone to finish the season for us.

"Alex Waller is not quite ready.

"We needed to get Mikey Haywood off the field - he was battling - but the fourth official wouldn't let us change him because we'd already had to put Reece Marshall on to go into prop.

"We wanted to put one of the loose forwards in but apparently you're not able to do that so we had to put Ehren Painter back in.

"The things became a bit of a shambles really between protecting some guys for the next couple of weeks and having some youngsters.

"It became a perfect storm."