Manhattan project The
Coach Chris Boyd has revolutionised team selection by creating a squad based on the New York skyline with a mixture of skyscraper stars and solid team players to get the balance right
IT IS late morning at Chris Boyd’s home in the deep Northamptonshire countryside. His wife, Linda, has just moved their horse — named after Bryan Habana — in anticipation of a thunderstorm, while Boyd contemplates how the thatched roof will cope with the heavy rain.
Warm muffins have just been pulled out of the oven and the village’s low-lying skyline is picture perfect, despite the grey skies. Boyd prefers it that way. Big, modern skyscrapers are not in his DNA.
He applies a similar philosophy to rugby. Boyd tends to steer clear of the shiny and glamorous assets. While Northampton’s play-off rivals have spent lockdown recruiting the likes of Semi Radradra, Manu Tuilagi and Kyle Sinckler, Boyd’s recruitment has remained relatively low key.
Why? His model is based around the Manhattan skyline — ensuring no one is lost in the shadow of towering recruits. It has been fine-tuned through Boyd’s own experiences, including meetings with the subject of Moneyball, Billy Beane, and the top office at Cirque du Soleil in Canada.
‘In cricket, they use bar diagrams to show how the team’s run rate progresses as you go through the overs,’ explains Boyd. ‘After 20 overs, you’ve got these skyscrapers that look like the Manhattan skyline. We applied a similar thing to our squad. For every skyscraper you’ve got, you’ve got to have a one- storey dwelling to balance it out. If you’ve got six or seven buildings over 30 storeys, then you’d better be prepared to accept a whole lot of structures that are only one storey high.
‘Teams are about balance. You need your X-factor players with your glue players, power players with your speed players, developing players with your experienced players, good team men with your mavericks. It’s a melting pot.
‘You also need to look at finance. One of our problems was that we had a significant number of youngsters who — and I’ve told them this — haven’t got any runs on the board yet. All of a sudden, Lewis Ludlam went to a World Cup, Alex Moon and Fraser Dingwall went into an EPS squad, George Furbank got capped. A lot of guys got sudden recognition, without achieving anything, and t heir agents’ and personal expectations suddenly change.
‘ In some cases, I agreed with t hem 100 per cent. But when everybody wants an increase and the salary cap has gone backwards, you don’t have to be terribly smart to work out that you’ve got a problem. We’ve balanced out our Manhattan over the next three or four years, within the bounds of the salary cap. It’s fair to say that we can’t afford to build the Burj Khalifa.’
In Boyd’ s garden, he has hammered an arrow-shaped sign onto one of the old oak trees. It points towards Aotearoa — the Maori name for New Zealand — and reminds Boyd of where he cut his teeth in rugby.
‘I got my atlas and compass out when we moved here and that’s the direction to home… 15,000 and something kilometres,’ he says.
It was one of Boyd’s former colleagues back at the New Zealand Rugby Union who set up t he meeting with Beane.
Beane gained Hollywood fame for the way he applied statistical analysis to baseball to build a team of low-cost, unfashionable misfits at the Oakland Athletics. The story was turned into a Hollywood movie, with Beane played by Brad Pitt.
‘I spent three days with Billy,’ says Boyd. ‘He doesn’t go to the games at the stadium so I was lucky enough to sit in his seat, right behind the pitcher’s arm. The pure Moneyball concept can’t work in rugby because we can’t just trade players. I can’t go to Lewis Ludlam and say: “Mate, I can’t afford to keep you, I’ m trading you to Bristol”. But there’s a lot to be gained from looking outside your bubble.’
Boyd’s interests extend far beyond rugby. Over the course of an hour-and-a-half conversation, he talks about fishing trips with his sons in the Cook Strait, Otago wine and the rise of Amazon Prime. He discusses the extent of government bail- outs during Covid- 19 and briefly touches on rugby’s own scrambled politics.
‘If Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk were able to negotiate a peaceful transition in South Africa with no bloodshed...’ he quips, with a deadpan tone.
During lockdown, he has watched documentaries about everything from Iraq to activist basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Most of his experiences somehow feed back into rugby.
‘In New Zealand, they have a very holistic approach to coaching and working with people,’ explains Boyd. ‘I went to the New Zealand ballet school and the New Zealand drama school.
‘If you went around every Premiership club, you would see subtle but not massive differences. Every rugby club has its list of players saying: “This guy has played 400 games, this has played 300 games”.’
A visit to Cirque du Soleil — the contemporary circus generating $1billion (£764m) a year — sticks in his memory. It features teams of some of the world’s most talented acrobats and Boyd wanted to see what, if anything, could transfer across to rugby.
‘We were sitting in the lounge of the Cirque de Soleil training school in Montreal, having a coffee, when the guy showing me around asked for my impressions,’ he explains.
‘I said to him: “Who has been the best performer in the history of Cirque du Soleil?”
‘He said it was so-and-so, but I was at the home of Cirque du Soleil and I couldn’t see these people. All
I could see were banners of shows. I asked why they weren’t up on the walls and the guy said: “We don’t celebrate individuals”.
‘At San Antonio Spurs, the basketball team, the only thing in their gymnasium is the banners from when they won the championship. Nothing else. There’s no mention of any great individuals.
‘ It’s i nteresting to see these comparisons. There are so many things to be learnt from different environments. Take the Cirque du Soleil… they had these 45-minute “j ouer” sessions when all t he athletes are purely trying to push the boundaries. They’re just trying all sorts of stupid, dumb, different things.
‘You sit there and go, OK, maybe we could impose 20 minutes into a rugby environment where you say: “For the next 20 minutes, I don’t care how many mistakes you make, how stupid it looks, how zany it is. Just go out there, enjoy yourself and challenge yourself around your skills”.’
That expressionist approach has transferred into Northampton’s style on the pitch. Only Bristol have made more metres in attack so far this season, but fast-track attacking has become part of the club’s DNA.
Their Manhattan skyline has moved upwards si nce Boyd’s arrival in 2018 and today’s restart game against Wasps will provide an early indication of their top-four credentials.
‘The only part of the Manhattan analogy I don’t like is that you would never treat a player like a building,’ says Boyd.
‘They’re all individuals. I think the concept of “No I in team” is 100 per cent wrong. Everybody is an “I”, but the trick is to get all those “I”s inside the bounds of a fence that everyone’s comfortable with.
‘The foundation is the identity, the culture, the history. Northampton has a rock-solid foundation. It’s a really good, old-fashioned, proper rugby club. It’s not frilly and it’s not fancy.
‘That foundation goes right back to when Reverend Franklin started up Franklin’s Gardens for naughty schoolboys all those years ago. We’ve spent a lot of time looking at history. I was lucky enough last year to go to Normandy to the landing beaches. We traced the four Northampton Saints players that were killed in the D-Day landings and laid a wreath. That historical connection is what we lack in New Zealand.
‘That’s one of the reasons we’re trying to build a museum here at the club. Your obligation as a player is to put some more rocks or steel into the foundation to make it stronger than it was.
‘Our philosophy is around growing and developing our own people.
‘YOU NEED X-FACTOR PLAYERS WITH YOUR GLUE PLAYERS’ ‘DAN BIGGAR IS WORTH A LOT OF MONEY BUT YOU GET VALUE FROM HIM’
Those guys are deeply attached to what you’re doing. At the moment, our production line is pretty good but we’re not stupid enough to think there won’t be holes.
‘We should only really need to make five or six signings in the next three years and hopefully two or three of those come out of the academy.
‘Take Manu Tuilagi as a classic example… if we bring him in then what happens to young Fraser Dingwall? He’s the guy I need to protect there.
‘I’m not saying there’s no space for skyscrapers. There will always be space. Dan Biggar is a guy who makes a good living and is worth a lot of money, but you get value for him. He gives us much, much more than what he gives on the field. He drives our standards and drives our intensity. With the stage three Covid rules, you’re not allowed ice baths and jacuzzis. Dan went out and bought a £30 wheelie bin and a small portable kids’ jacuzzi.
‘He’s driving standards by still doing his hot and cold recovery and other players follow that. If you’re getting a relatively large return in rent from the skyscraper then it makes sense, doesn’t it?’
Boyd lists a cast of Saints players who could become the next skyscraper — and Linda jokes that the family’s next horse could be named in their honour.
‘ We talk about Manhattan but we’re not city folk really,’ quips Boyd. ‘It’s not home here and we miss our kids, but it’s a fantastic village with lovely people. I like the fact I can sit out here and see nobody. Just a fox, a badger and a few squirrels. I’ll take it over the city any day.’