Saints Q&A - part two: Boyd looks forward to turning things around

Chris Boyd will take his side to Sale Sharks for a tasty season opener on November 20.

And as the clock ticks down to the start of a new campaign, Chris Boyd has been fielding questions with his side bidding to improve on an eighth-placed finish in the Gallagher Premiership...

Q: Is there any ability to bring in players before the season starts?

A: “The simple answer is no.

“We, like most clubs, have a cost structure that is north of a million pounds a month and with no income coming in from games, that creates massive financial challenges.

“It’s tough for us in that we’ve reduced our squad by three to five players anyway.

“To finish the season, we had 12 guys we couldn’t select (due to injury), including the four senior loosehead props, which allowed Manny Iyogun to stand up and do a great job.

“We’re 10 or 12 guys down and with the Eight Nations, we’ve got six players picked in the English environment, Rory Hutchinson could be with Scotland, Dan Biggar with Wales and a couple of our guys could be with Fiji.

“What you’ve got is what you’ve got.

“I suspect we’ll get some of our England guys back each week. The arrangement we’ve got with the RFU is that they start the week with England but they could come back if they’re not selected.

“We’ll get some guys back from long-term injured, like Alex Waller. Ollie Sleightholme will be back.

“If I said we’re absolutely flush around numbers of people who are jumping out to play, the answer would be no, and we, like a lot of clubs, have got to deal with what we’ve got.”

Q: Saints have formed a relationship with Bedford - could any of their players come and play at Franklin’s Gardens?

A: “They could, but players who are playing for Bedford are not going to be at the top end of your roster unless you’ve got your recruitment wrong.

“We’ve already had some Bedford boys come in and train with us, and they’re great lads, but you replace a Piers Francis and a Fraser Dingwall with a youngster from Bedford and it’s not quite an equal swap.

“The Bedford arrangement was really good because it was going to allow a lot of the lads at the back end of our roster and some of the younger guys in the Academy to play with Bedford and it offered some of those Bedford boys the chance to come and train with us.

“It would be a long bow to think half a dozen boys from Bedford are going to be

the cavalry coming to rescue us.

“We’ve got some good young fellas in the Academy who are probably not quite ready but 12 months ago, not many people thought George Furbank was ready either so it’s cometh the hour, cometh the man, and we just need as many rocks to build the youngsters around.

“If you’ve got a critical mass of young guys and Alex Waller comes back, Tom Wood comes back, Piers Francis comes back, Matty Proctor, who is a glue-type player, comes back, suddenly you’ve got some of those sorts of players, but it’s going to be a challenge.”

Q: Do you think the Saints pack needs beefing up?

A: “If you do the pack weights, we’re not far away from a lot of teams.

“We are more vertical than horizontal in a way - we’ve got quite a tall group and they’re quite athletic, but we don’t have the big ball carrying guys, though I think we

have a lot of capability in that area.

“In all honesty, you don’t like to divvy up the team and say ‘this bit’s working and this bit’s not’ but 12 months ago we were having problems at set piece and I think for the season end, on our ball, our scrum was first or second most efficient in terms of ability to break from the scrum, and our lineout is right at the top as well.

“Where we haven’t been quite as efficient is when we’ve been in that area 10 metres from the goalline with the ball and without the ball and then it’s ‘roll your sleeves up and let’s get dark and dirty’. It’s an area we’ve identified that we need to get better at.

“There are some experienced guys in that pack and some youngsters and we’ve got to be patient that it’s going to come right.

“We have the ability to make some subtle changes to our team, both in the pack and the backline, but 80 per cent of what we’re going to have in 2023 is already here.

“We’ve got the group we’re committed to and we’ve just got to do the best we can.”

Q: How can Saints compete with the likes of Sale when you look at the weight in their backline?

A: “That allows you to play a different sort of game and apart from Taqele Naiyaravoro we do have a small backline but if you can control possession at source and control the tempo of the game, you can break teams like Sale and Bath and Exeter, who are big and heavy.

“When they control the ball at source and they get the territory, it becomes very difficult.

“There’s no doubt that the biggest challenge for us is how we control enough of the game to score enough points and win games against bigger sides than us.”

Q: How much work are you doing on the psychological side of the game?

A: “It varies from person to person.

“One of the problems we had was that because last season we had a pretty good run and got through to the Premiership semi-final, there was a heightened expectation.

“When I first arrived and said we wanted to grow as a group of people and individuals and we wanted to compete for trophies regularly, there was a few eyebrows raised.

“People thought they were a long way away from that, but when we managed to win the Premiership Rugby Cup and we got into the Premiership semi-finals, the expectation went up.

“We had some youngsters who were selected to play internationally and by and large those guys were selected on potential, not on performance.

“Right now, we have two hardened internationals, Courtney Lawes and Dan Biggar, and Owen Franks has been one.

“We have a huge number of players who have really big potential and those players enjoyed the fruits of a good run last year and some early recognition in their rugby journeys.

“Probably the team and those individuals got a little bit bogged down by the weight of expectation and instead of those youngsters playing with no fear and no worry, now the fear in their mind is ‘am I playing well enough to get picked again and am I impressing this person or that person’ rather than just playing the game.

“I think collectively the expectation can either be a wall or a warm wind at your back and for some individuals, I think that expectation probably got to them.

“I saw some of those guys trying so hard because they could see they had reset the bar for themselves to such a high standard and when they had a bad game or a tough day at the office, they felt a little bit behind the eight ball and I saw some guys get themselves into a little bit of a tizz because they forgot what got them where they got to, which was just to get out there and enjoy what you’re doing and take the pressure off yourself.

“We tried to diffuse it and actually if you sat down and looked at our European quarter-final at Exeter a few weeks ago and our semi-final at Exeter in the Premiership last year, we were significantly better against them in a big game this year.

“It was quite encouraging and we’ve still got a way to go, but we were never in the game last year in the Premiership but we had patches in the European quarter-final where we controlled the game, the tempo, the territory and just couldn’t quite wriggle a foot on the throat when we needed to.

“We couldn’t stay on top and then we conceded softly a couple of times and the rest is history.

“We haven’t had the results and I’m not going to hide from that fact, but some performances have been very good, some have been patchy and one in particular (the defeat at Leicester) was absolutely awful. It was terrible, disgraceful and embarrassing. All of the above.”

Q: How are you going to put things right?

A: “We spent about six hours as a coaching group the day after the Gloucester game was supposed to be played and looked at the foundations our game needs to be built on. We do think that in reflection, some of the confidence we got from the back end of last season, when it came under pressure, there wasn’t rock solid enough foundations.

“I don’t think things are going to change significantly but we’re going to have to be more accountable and harder on making sure people own their performances. We’ve got to get some guys playing.

“I’m not making excuses before we start because every club will be the same, but we’re going to have quite a chunk of guys away during the Eight Nations campaign and a guy like Dan Biggar is only going to be available for three of the first 14 games.

“It’s tough when your best players are not there but somebody else has got to stand up and we’ve got to get used to managing the players coming and going on international duty and with injuries.

“The group that’s going to represent us has got to do a job for us.

“There’s no silver bullet here, just hard work.”

Q: What kind of pre-season is it going to be?

A: “It’s incredibly difficult because you usually have about 12 weeks, but we have three and in the third week we’re going to play Worcester in a warm-up game.

“The boys have got three weeks for leave but most won’t be having genuine leave.

“Most rugby players if they have a few weeks off would probably go a bit closer to the equator and get a bit of sun and sand, but most are not going that so they’re not going to come back physically or mentally really hungry and

then we’ve only got three weeks before we play a game again.

“It’s going to be critical we get that period of time right and there’s been a lot of planning going into how we need to structure that time to see how we can get the best out of the group.”

Q: Do Saints need to be a bit more heads-up in the way they’re trying to play?

A: “There’s no doubt we have to be a bit more pragmatic with how we play in the back third of the field and how we move through the middle third and take our risk when we’re not playing well.

“If you’re a team that only plays the picture that’s in front of you and you’re a few degrees of separation out from that, the consequences can be fairly savage.

“We went through that period post-Covid where we were dreadful under the high ball and we conceded seven tries due to being unable to diffuse the bombs coming from other people. People see that and you get more.

“Ian Vass has really driven that hard and one of the most pleasing things about the Sale game was we finally saw the return of George Furbank where he was climbing above other people and dominating the aerial game.

“There’s no doubt we have to be a bit more structured in our decision making before we get our game going again.

“You’ve got Exeter and Saracens down one end in terms or style and at the other end there’s the laissez faire teams who play a lot and we’ve just got to find where we’re at in our game with the group we’ve got and the opposition we’re playing.

“We have to be a bit more strong-minded to put some solidity into our game and rebuild it to get it back to where we want to go to.”