Racing 92 would beat a lot of international sides, says Saints boss Boyd

Chris Boyd believes star-studded Racing 92 would beat plenty of international sides.
Chris BoydChris Boyd
Chris Boyd

And the Saints boss believes the French giants will be fully focused on flooring their English opponents at cinch Stadium at Franklin's Gardens on Friday night.

Saints welcome Racing for a Champions Cup opener that looks like a very difficult prospect, despite the away side's recent form.

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Racing have lost their past three matches in the Top 14, slipping to eighth in the league standings.

But Boyd is reading nothing into that, and he feels all of their eggs are in the European basket.

“Racing have never won it and our spy inside their camp said they are more focused on the Heineken Champions Cup than they are on the French league because it is the one thing their owner wants to win,” Boyd said.

“The thing for us is this is a one-off game for us to test ourselves against a side that is choc-full of quality. It’s a really good benchmark for us.

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“The biggest thing about doing your homework is if you think our performance against Bath was a box of chocolates… if you have a look at some of their games they have been dreadful but it seems to be the French way.

"They could go to an away game (in the Top 14) that they don’t appear to be very interested in… so you don’t get that sort of a swing in the Premiership.

“You can go and find anything you want to find from Racing, poor defence, good defence, wide attack, aerial kicking, you can find whatever you like because they can produce it all, but what we do know is when they put all their best players together and they are focused on a performance, then a team like Racing would probably beat certainly all tier two nations globally and would probably give some of the bottom of the tier one nations a bit of a hurry up.

"They are a quality side.”

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