The admiration Chris Boyd has for Finn Russell after Friday night

Northampton boss Chris Boyd could only admire Finn Russell after the Racing 92 fly-half orchestrated a 45-14 Heineken Champions Cup victory at Franklin’s Gardens on Friday night. Russell played a central role in four of his side’s five tries as he linked brilliantly with Kurtley Beale to put a disappointing Saints team to the sword on the opening day of the tournament.

“Finn Russell passed well, kicked well, ran the game well. He is a quality footballer,” Boyd said about Racing talisman Russell. “When Finn plays behind a pack that gives him front-foot ball he is an absolute handful.

“When you play someone like Finn Russell, it’s not him you have to get at, it’s the ball he picks up. I enjoy watching Finn play, he’s a quality player. Racing lived up to their Test match status. Just about everyone in their team has played Test rugby and some of them are world-class.

Ex-All Blacks prop John Afoa guests on RugbyPass Offload

Video Player is loading.

Play Video

PlaySkip BackwardSkip Forward

Unmute

Current Time 0:00

/

Duration 0:00

Loaded: 0%

Stream Type LIVE

Seek to live, currently behind liveLIVE

Remaining Time -0:00

 

1x

Playback Rate

Chapters

• Chapters

Descriptions

• descriptions off, selected

Captions

• captions settings, opens captions settings dialog
• captions off, selected

Audio Track

Fullscreen

This is a modal window.

The Video Cloud video was not found.

Error Code: VIDEO_CLOUD_ERR_VIDEO_NOT_FOUND

Session ID: 2025-05-20:f33f19d6773700bdc6a28e84 Player Element ID: brightcove-embedded-video

OK

Close Modal Dialog

Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window.

Text

ColorWhiteBlackRedGreenBlueYellowMagentaCyanOpacityOpaqueSemi-Transparent

Text Background

ColorBlackWhiteRedGreenBlueYellowMagentaCyanOpacityOpaqueSemi-TransparentTransparent

Caption Area Background

ColorBlackWhiteRedGreenBlueYellowMagentaCyanOpacityTransparentSemi-TransparentOpaque

Font Size

50%75%100%125%150%175%200%300%400%

Text Edge Style

NoneRaisedDepressedUniformDrop shadow

Font Family

Proportional Sans-SerifMonospace Sans-SerifProportional SerifMonospace SerifCasualScriptSmall Caps

ResetDone

Close Modal Dialog

End of dialog window.

Close Modal Dialog

This is a modal window. This modal can be closed by pressing the Escape key or activating the close button.

Ex-All Blacks prop John Afoa guests on RugbyPass Offload

“They are desperate to win the competition and they have a roster that could threaten. I’d expect them to be there somewhere around the end.”

Saints trailed 13-0 after just eight minutes and they never recovered as flanker Wenceslas Lauret ran in a hat-trick and wing Juan Imhoff plundered two touch downs. 

"Our spy inside their camp said…"#Northampton #NORvRAC #HeinekenChampionsCup
https://t.co/Q2wLnE3MVg

— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) December 7, 2021

“I can’t fault the intent. We tried hard, but at times we were naïve and at times we were sloppy,” Boyd said. “At times we were in trouble physically and didn’t get enough of our game on the field. We conceded too many points early and really didn’t stay in the hunt long enough to threaten at all.”

Northampton visit Ulster next Friday, with Dan Biggar a major doubt after he limped off with a thigh injury, but Courtney Lawes should be back after recovering from Covid-19. “Ulster is a game that we need to get some points out of if we want to stay in the Champions Cup,” Boyd said.

“Courtney was coming back from the return-to-play protocol for Covid. The return to play is different for a normal human being, so we were hopeful he’d be right, but he didn’t get enough of his training in to be available for this game.”