'A little bit too early' for Boyd to think about his Saints future

The Kiwi boss has made a brilliant start to life at Franklin's Gardens, having arrived from Super Rugby side the Hurricanes in 2018.

Boyd steered Saints to a European Challenge Cup quarter-final last season, as well as guiding them to Premiership Rugby Cup glory - their first trophy for five years - and a Gallagher Premiership top-four finish.

They currently sit second in the league standings this season and won their opening Champions Cup match, against Lyon, last Sunday.

But when asked whether he could stay at Saints beyond his current three-year deal, Boyd told fans at a season ticket holders forum: "It's a little bit too early for that.

"We might be sitting here in 12 months' time and it might be a completely different picture.

"You might be saying to him (Saints CEO Mark Darbon) 'why didn't you get rid of that mug last year?'.

"Things can change really quickly in this game, I can promise you that."

Reflecting on his Saints stay so far, Boyd said: "It's pretty easy to sit here at the moment because we had a reasonable year last year.

"We had a sticky start and managed to get it right at the end.

"This year, we made the decision to use the PRC (Premiership Rugby Cup) to develop some of our youngsters and we lost our first four games, including the (pre-season) game against Leinster.

"There were a few wobbles around the place and I could see people were getting a bit uncomfortable about the fact we lost our first four games.

"But we stuck to it and the last month has been pretty good for us.

"We're in a good place, it's a positive place to speak from.

"I've thoroughly enjoyed it, I'm pleasantly surprised around the brand of rugby we've been able to play.

"We have three things around how we want to play, and we want to play really good football.

"The barometer for that is that you guys (the fans) go home and if the spectators go home and and say the team has worked really hard and they've enjoyed the spectacle, that's the No.1 thing.

"Secondly, as a team internally, we want to have fun doing it. There's no point turning up to work and working hard and not enjoying it.

"Thirdly, we want to play in silverware matches regularly.

"We want to be challenging continually and it's been good."