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'If you want security you'd never be a rugby coach' - Chris Boyd opens up about 'ruthless' northern hemisphere

Chris Boyd and Sam Vesty address the Northampton players at training (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

Northampton head coach Chris Boyd has shed light into the ruthless nature of coaching in the northern hemisphere.

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The man who lead the Hurricanes to their maiden Super Rugby title in 2016 referenced Australian coach Matt O’Connor, who was sacked by Leicester just one match into the 2018 Premiership.

“I can’t understand how a board can have an opinion of somebody and then after one week it changes significantly enough that they need to act,” Boyd told Liam Napier from The New Zealand Herald. “With due respect to Matt, he was probably a dead man walking. They were probably just waiting to get the opportunity.

“If they felt like that, I don’t understand why they didn’t act like that in the offseason.”

The demand for instant results in Europe offers a different dynamic to coaching elsewhere.

“It’s a ruthless place,” Boyd said. “If you get it right it’s great, and if you don’t then you go and that’s how it is.

“I 100 per cent agree with it – that’s the nature of the beast. There’s a demand here for performance. We’re employed by our clubs which are often owned by private individuals where often in New Zealand we’re employed by NZ Rugby.”

Boyd is aware that seeing out his three-year contract with Northampton isn’t guaranteed.

“If I’m spectacularly unsuccessful here and I go that’s because I haven’t got the results that I was employed to get and I understand that so be it.

“A contract protects you from things you can’t control around the whims of boards and owners.

“If you want security you’d never be a rugby coach.”

Boyd’s Saints are currently 10th on the Premiership table with just three wins from their nine league fixtures. Boyd began coaching in 2003 and and joined Northampton in 2018 after three years at the helm of the Hurricanes.

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J
JW 29 minutes ago
Competing interests and rotated squads: What the 'player welfare summer' is really telling us

Nice, that’s good to hear, I was worried for the tackler and it increasing concussions overall.


My question is still the same, and the important one though. Where the rate of concussions in Fed 2 high? Of course if there where only three concussions, and they were reduced now to one, then there is no need for the new laws etc.


There are two angles to this discussion, mine above about player welfare, and of course the that which you raise, legal responsibility. More, the legal responsibility we are concerned with is what’s happening now.


WR don’t really know much about CTE I wouldn’t think, whether it happens from innocuous things like heading a ball, or from small knocks or big knocks that don’t heal. Right now they are ensuring the backside is clean by implementing laws to rule out any possibility they didn’t do enough. So once they understand the problem more they may realise some things are overboard.


The other legal responsibility is the one you are talking about in France, the past. Did the LNR and WR know about the severity and frequency of CTE in rugby? That is the question in that debate. If they didn’t know then theres nothing they could have done, so there is no worry. Further, what we may have now is a situation where 90% of those court actions might not happen in future thanks to the new framework we already have around HIA and head contact processes. Your English example is only going to be an issue if future players still continue to receive CTE (as that is obviously bad), as it is now, the players have taken on their own responsibility by ignore advice. No doubt some countries, like France and New Zealand, will lower their tackle height, but as long as the union has done an adequate job in advising of the severity of the problem at least the legal shadow over the community game will have gone.

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