Saints boss Boyd discusses recruitment strategy

Saints brought in the likes of Owen Franks and Matt Proctor ahead of the start of this season.

But they have since lost Heinrich Brüssow and Dylan Hartley to retirement.

Boyd was asked about his recruitment strategy at the season ticket holders forum at Franklin's Gardens on Tuesday night.

And he said: "It's really interesting because we've now got our contracting spreadsheet out to about the 2025/26 season.

"We've even got some young boys' names in the Academy for three or four years' time so we're trying to predict where the holes are going to be and where we need to fill them if people retire or move on.

"The interesting thing short term is that our team for next season is almost full.

"We have no room to recruit a back, unless we lose one, and we've probably only got room to recruit a couple of forwards if we want to.

"The Saints team of this season and next season won't be vastly different.

"We will continue to stick to a policy of young and English, and you will see that we've avoided the temptation this year of chasing anyone with a big name, high profile and expensive ticket.

"Because what's going to happen with all of these youngsters is that they're going to come up. We're getting reasonably good value out of them at the moment because they're in their first contracts, but in four years' time it's going to be a big job to keep them all.

"We're going to have to be really smart about how we keep those because I'm convinced that if we can keep the spine of this team together from young, English, local boys, that's the best place we can come from.

"To sum it up, we're not looking for a lot (of signings for) next year."