Premiership: Northampton’s Chris Boyd says his team cannot afford to lose any more games

Dylan Coetzee

03 Apr 2022 11:14 AM

Northampton director of rugby Chris Boyd is convinced that his side cannot lose any more games this season after they triumphed over Bristol 39-22 on Saturday.

Poor form earlier in the Premiership means the Saints need to finish strong to qualify for the play-offs but have begun the final push well with three wins on the bounce.

Late push

Thanks to results elsewhere this weekend, a five-try win takes Northampton into fifth on the table.

“I wasn’t bad at maths at school, but I sat there three or four weeks ago, trying to do all the permutations and stuff, but I’m pretty certain we can’t afford to lose,” Boyd said.

“We’ve been treating it as knockout football for the last three weeks and we’ll see if that’s enough or not at the end.

“We lost three or four games in a row and they were fine margins.

“We’ve managed now, since we’ve been playing knockout rugby, to sneak the last three, or get points in the last three, so it’s knockout football and we’re enjoying playing it.

“We gave a penalty away and conceded a try before the break, so it wasn’t all roses at half-time, but we knew if we kept sticking to what the plan was and kept doing it, then we had a pretty good chance of coming out the right side at the end.”

Bristol director of rugby Pat Lam has identified moments in the game where their opposition got the better of his side and felt a lack of consistency with yellow cards.

“They’ve got a dangerous attack, so we talked about controlling the ball and coming at them,” Lam said.

“We started off with a good try and there were a couple of opportunities that we missed for points, and then when we turned the ball over, which was one thing we didn’t want to do, they were very dangerous.

“We gave away back-to-back (tries) where there was a turnover at the line-out – unfortunately, some guys got their alignment in the system wrong, and they scored two tries that we shouldn’t have let in.

“We worked our way back to 24-17 and then, once again, we’re down to 13 men on yellow cards (for Radradra and Fitz Harding).

“We’ve been hit with a lot of yellow cards, and red cards, for these tackles, but the two that went today, the explanations were very similar to other teams that don’t get yellow cards, just penalty only.”

Bristol Pat Lam