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It's now 13 defeats in a row for Northampton, but Chris Boyd hasn't lost all hope yet
By Liam Heagney
Northampton boss Chris Boyd isn't too concerned his team felt to a 13th consecutive defeat on Saturday, this time losing to Leinster in the Champions Cup on a 35-19 scoreline in Dublin. Not since an August 22 away win at London Irish in the Premiership have Northampton tasted victory under Boyd.
Their 2019/20 run after that success at Irish was seven league losses and another in Europe and that form has carried over into 2020/21, Saints losing their opening three games prop up their Premiership while their hopes of a good run in Europe are over after back-to-back defeats in recent weekends.
Boyd, though, doesn't feel their latest defeat will have a negative impact when they try to pick up the pieces with their Boxing Day Premiership game at home to Worcester.
"I don't believe that the two [Europe and the league] are linked," he said. "If we came and got pasted by 60-0 and played really poorly then it might have had an impact but we have got probably half a dozen guys to come back into the team. Worcester coming to us is a very important match from a league point of view."
Training 14-0 early on in Dublin, Northampton seemed set to get heavily beaten. However, the rallied with tries from Fraser Dingwall, Tom James and Nick Isiekwe and Leinster were left relying on last-quarter penalty kicks to see out the win.
"We made some defensive lapses but generally the intent was good. It probably didn't show on the TV, and you certainly wouldn’t have picked it up on the radio, but it was quite windy. It actually was quite difficult to play.
"We haven’t lacked intent all year. We tried really hard, The attitude of the players wasn't missing. We have just been inaccurate for periods of time. Our challenge is to be more consistent. We know we have the capability but we just drop off consistently and it cost us."
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There is nothing particularly significant about Ireland in this regard compared to other Tier 1 nations. To look at 'strategy' for illegal play its best to see what teams push boundaries with new laws. SA have milked two tries at ruck block downs. The strategy is to charge the first few before the ball is out at about 4 seconds but pull out and put up hands in reigned apology. The referees usually allow the scum half to clear without awarding a penalty in this scenario. The problem with that being that the scrumhalf is now taking over 5 seconds through no fault of his own. Having achieved a few slow balls > 5s , the SA forward can now pick a scrum to charge dead on 5s. Now if the scrum half waits, he will concede a penalty, as we saw against Scotland. With the new rule in place, any early charge should result in an immediate penalty.
SA also got an offside block against England which was pivotal again after a couple of 'apologetic' offside aborted charges forcing England to clear slowly.
Go to commentsYep, you're not the sharpest tool in the shed are you?
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