Saints dressing room 'like a morgue' after defeat to Ulster

Chris Boyd says the Saints dressing room was 'like a morgue' after his side suffered a 35-27 defeat to Ulster on Saturday night.
Chris BoydChris Boyd
Chris Boyd

The black, green and gold had led 22-14 at half-time in the Challenge Cup quarter-final at Franklin's Gardens, despite being hit by three first-half yellow cards.

Saints were 27-21 up with eight minutes to go, but Ulster scored twice to snatch the victory and book their place in the semi-finals.

And Boyd said: "It's like a flaming morgue in the changing room - the boys are very disappointed.

"We thought we had a pretty decent first half and thought if we kept playing the way we were playing and dominating the parts of the game we were, we might have got a different result.

"But fair credit to them (Ulster), they tightened up their game and put a squeeze on and we weren't able to live with it.

"It's very disappointing and the only upside is that the boys will get a week off in a few weeks' time so when the boys get over themselves, which will take a while, they'll know they get some time off."

When asked whether the first-half sin-binnings sucked energy from Saints in the latter stages of the game, Boyd said: "It's an interesting question.

"We thought we'd have more petrol in our tank than they would but maybe that period of 15 or 20 minutes where they were throwing the kitchen sink at us and we managed to all but hold them out, it might have told in the end.

"But by the time we got to the last 10 or 15 minutes we weren't winning many collisions and that was the game really."

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