'Everyone is embarrassed by the performance' - Boyd on Saints' defeat to Gloucester

Chris Boyd says everyone in the Saints dressing room is embarrassed by the performance that was put in against Gloucester on Saturday afternoon.
Saints suffered a hugely disappointing defeat to GloucesterSaints suffered a hugely disappointing defeat to Gloucester
Saints suffered a hugely disappointing defeat to Gloucester

The black, green and gold shipped four tries as they suffered a chastening 31-7 defeat at Franklin's Gardens.

Gloucester belied their lowly league position - they sat 10th going into the game - as they cruised to a comfortable bonus-point win.

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But for Saints, it was a shocking afternoon as they struggled to get anything going before Henry Taylor's late try gave them barely a semblance of cheer.

"Everyone in the changing room is pretty embarrassed by the performance and you'd hope you'd get a response now," said Boyd, whose side could have moved up to fourth with a win.

"We've let it (the play-off challenge) slip out of our hands now and we're relying on other people beating other people.

"What will be will be and we'll just try and go game by game.

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"If it's enough, it's enough but that certainly places a massive dent.

"Even if some other results went for us, we'd have to win four out of our last four games to be in the hunt.

"We'll certainly try to do it, but we've lost control of ourselves."

When asked whether there were any redeeming features during the hugely disappointing home defeat, Boyd said: "Not a single one.

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"When English people walk the dogs, they put stuff in those little bags - we had a big one of those bags.

"We didn't win anything today.

"Credit to Gloucester - they came with a plan - and we didn't win our set piece, we didn't win the breakdown, we didn't win the aerial game, we didn't win anything.

"When you're not winning any part of your game, you've got nothing to hang your hat on so it was massively disappointing.

"We'd been heading north for the past month, playing reasonably good code but there's something around our preparation and performance that's unacceptable.

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"We would expect, from the whole group, a reasonable response from that."

Saints and Gloucester had last weekend off as they were not in European action.

But only one of the teams appeared to benefit from the break from playing.

"You would normally think it would be positive because you get some freshness and get everyone re-energised and re-enthused," Boyd said.

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"But a week off in a Covid environment is not quite as attractive as a week off in a non-Covid environment.

"I did notice no one went away, they just milled around and did some bits and pieces.

"It wasn't really a holiday.

"Whether that (break) had any impact or not, it would probably be clutching at straws.

"Normally with our guys you can't fault their commitment but I think we were outplayed in every aspect today and the score was a reflection of that."

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