Pantomime villain Ashton crowns lively career with try record
Having broken the Premiership Rugby try-scoring record with a hat-trick at the weekend and moved within just five tries of a ton, you might think Chris Ashton would be ready for his after-dinner speech career.
But doing all of the above while being a controversial rugby player, often the centre of debate, is what truly keeps you interesting.
At the age of 35, Ashton is thriving once more. Two scores in March put him level with Tom Varndell for the most tries in the Premiership – 92 – but three more inside 30 minutes against Bristol on Saturday has put him outright as the most prolific ever.
He is at his sixth Premiership club and his eighth club in total, if you include an early stint at league side Wigan Warriors and a season-long hiatus with then-galacticos of Toulon.
Why, then, when Ashton has reached such heights does his career remain so controversial?
Over 450 of his points came for his first Premiership club, Northampton Saints. He was a cult hero.
“He was ours,” one Saints season ticket holder told Morning Wire “It wasn’t nice to see him move on.”
A rugby league lad through and through, Ashton took the abrasive techniques of one code and adapted it to union.
If you enter the Wigan-born player’s name into a search engine followed by the word ‘ban’, you’ll see article after article. They span his entire career; he’s always playing on the edge.
Results return: ‘dangerous play’, ‘eye contact’, ‘tip-tackle’ – like the naughty child at school.
In 2011, in what has become one of his most notorious moments, he and Manu Tuilagi had a punch-up. It defined an East Midlands rivalry in an age where it mattered more maybe that it seems to today.
He was the pantomime villain, and still is. This season he made a try-saving tackle in the first half of a match before being sent off in the second.
His 95 Premiership tries have come against 14 clubs, 15 were against Worcester, 11 against Harlequins – two of his six English employers.
It feels like a waste that such a talented player appeared for England on 44 occasions. He scored 100 points for the Red Rose, however, including one of the most memorable tries when he danced rings around Australia to score a 90m stunner in 2010.
Ashton enjoyed a successful five-year spell at Saracens between 2012 and 2017 where he won the Premiership twice and Champions Cup once – appearing for the club more than 100 times and starring in the heightened rivalry between Sarries and Saints.
But following a two year stint at Sale between 2018 and 2020, Ashton found himself at Quins, Worcester and now Leicester – almost hopping around.
It’s not been a fall from grace, more a case of not finding the right fit. But Steve Borthwick and Leicester Tigers have bucked that trend for Ashton.
“Steve has been very clear with me on his expectations of anyone coming into this environment,” he said on joining his once rival side – no longer with Tuilagi at the club.
Ashton is the top try scorer in the Premiership, and when you look at the rollercoaster career of the pantomime villain, there’s a sense of this being his crowning glory. Next stop? 100.