Boyd: Saints 'somewhere between stupid and embarrassing' in Bristol defeat

Saints were sinners as they were hit with four late yellow cards, reducing them to 11 men before Piers O'Conor scored and Ian Madigan converted to seal a 26-24 success for the Bears.

Referee Christophe Ridley was jeered regularly in the closing stages, but Boyd believes it was his side's own fault that they found themselves in late difficulty.

They had opportunities to seal the win before Bristol bagged themselves a bonus-point victory at the end.

And when asked whether he had ever witnessed anything like the crazy ending to the game, Boyd replied: "No, I haven't. I need to put the five minutes out of my mind otherwise it will haunt me for ever.

"What irritated me more was the 15 or 20 minutes leading up to that final five minutes when we had the game under control.

"We got ourselves in a situation to put them away and we didn't.

"It was a succession of poor bits of skill and very dumb decisions that cost us and gave them opportunities to get back in the game.

"Credit to Bristol, but it's a game that we've lost.

"We worked out way back into it and got ourselves into a reasonable position but we kept insisting on being somewhere between stupid and embarrassing."

On the officiating, Boyd said: "There was some really interesting stuff going on around the rucks, particularly when George Smith came on.

"It was two sides who were going at the ball pretty hard and the ref had some difficult decisions to make but it should never happened at the end because we should have been well past five points up."