Boyd’s future in balance at Saints

CHRIS Boyd is still in negotiations with Northampton Saints about his future at the club beyond the end of the 2020/21 season.

Boyd’s current deal will run out next summer as he signed for three years when joining from Super Rugby side the Hurricanes in 2018.

Assistant coaches Sam Vesty, Phil Dowson and Matt Ferguson were all recently awarded new contracts.

Talks have been ongoing with Boyd for months, but the popular New Zealander’s bargaining position has not been helped by Saints’ terrible run of form since the Premiership restart.

Having gone into lockdown handily placed for a push for the play-offs, Saints have slipped down to seventh and have lost a record seven consecutive games at home.

In his first season in charge, Boyd, below, helped Saints to finish fourth in the Premiership, while guiding them to glory in the Premiership Rugby Cup and the quarter-finals of the Challenge Cup.

There were encouraging signs that all was not lost when the team performed well in losing 38-15 at Exeter in the Champions Cup quarter-finals a fortnight ago, and Boyd believes they are on the right track to deliver better results.

“I don’t know if we’ve got an unrealistic expectation, but we expect to win every game we play, and we expect that if we bring our ‘A’ game, we’re not going to be that far away,” the Saints DoR said.

“If you looked at our performance in the Champions Cup quarter-final at Exeter and compared it to the Premiership semi-final last year, we were significantly better this year than last year when we were well beaten by Exeter.

“I think we’re only at the start of a journey with a coaching group and a group of players I know are capable of being a really good side.

“So we have just got to hunker down, stay calm and not get frustrated.”