'Massive disappointment' for Boyd's Saints after big home defeat to Harlequins

The black, green and gold conceded six tries as they slipped to a 49-29 defeat to Harlequins at Franklin's Gardens on Saturday afternoon.

It was Quins' first league win in Northampton since December 2012 and Saints' eighth defeat from as many Premiership home matches in 2020.

Boyd's side have lost 14 of the past 16 games they have played in all competitions.

And the Kiwi boss, who recently signed a one-year contract extension that takes him to the summer of 2022, said: "As you'd expect, it's a massive disappointment.

"All high performance environments prepare to play well and win, so we need to get the microscope over a lot of things, which we've been doing constantly anyway.

"We've got to roll our sleeves us and work our way out of this."

On the defeat to Quins, in which Saints did bag a four-try bonus point, Boyd said: "We spent most of the 80 minutes chasing the game and then we got ourselves back in the game before half-time with a try and got to within eight late on, but I thought their eight, nine, 10, 12 played particularly well and controlled the game significantly better than we did.

"For us to concede six tries in the end was really disappointing."

Saints were badly exposed in the wide channels.

And Boyd said: "It's a concern when you play Harlequins but not such a concern against other sides because not many others play with that much width, but it was no surprise.

"We practiced all week about how we were going to deal with it - there's no rocket science to it.

"They did well but we didn't execute accurately what we knew was coming all week.

"It was really disappointing that we conceded three or four tries around that wide edge because we'd practiced all week but it's not a terminal issue for us because most sides don't play like that."

Saints did drag themselves back to eight points behind with eight minutes to play.

But Quins then scored twice more to completely take the game away and rub salt in the gaping wounds.

"We're not an unskillful team but when we got back to within eight points, our decision making was probably a bit optimistic," Boyd said.

"We didn't need to panic but we took a quick tap and turned the ball over.

"The same thing happened at Sale (where Saints lost 32-23) last week.

"Despite the fact we spoke about needing to be more calm and in control when trying to chase a game, we went away from that.

"We've just got to keep chipping away."