They can finally relax in Chris Ashton’s local supermarket. For weeks the Saracens wing has been prowling the aisles, unable to do the thing that comes most naturally to him at weekends. “You do get frustrated,” sighs Ashton, drooling over his side’s European Champions Cup quarter‑final against Northampton much as a castaway would a decent restaurant. “You miss Saturday or Sunday at 3pm. If you haven’t got that outlet … I ended up down Tesco just ramming old ladies out of the way with my trolley.”
At other times he could be found wrestling with a Saracens staff member, simply trying to release more of his pent-up energy. “I don’t even like wrestling but it was something to take some aggression out on. I got battered every week but I needed something extra.” While England were securing their Six Nations grand slam he says he felt like a prisoner and found it easier to imagine not being picked. “I told myself it wouldn’t have been me. That was the way I had to look at it. I don’t think it matters whether I believed it or not, it’s what I taught myself to help me sit and watch England win.”
Beneath all the peeling layers of disappointment – “I just felt trapped, you feel helpless on the sidelines” – there remains a degree of anger. To be banned just as he was about to re‑enter the international equation under Eddie Jones is one thing; to receive a 10-week sanction for making contact with the eye area of Ulster’s Luke Marshall was distinctly harsh to most neutral observers.
It has left Ashton convinced that more ex‑players should be involved in the latter stages of disciplinary decisions, instead of leaving career‑defining verdicts to those who have never scrabbled for a ball in a maul or fractionally mistimed an aerial tackle in a professional fixture. “I think we’d all like to see someone with experience of playing rugby in with the judges,” Ashton suggests. “Right now we don’t have that. You have no one to talk to about being in a certain situation. Sometimes that’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t played to the level we’re playing at.”
The letter of the law will always be hard to sidestep but there is growing disquiet within the game regarding the consistency of the disciplinary process across different tournaments. Saracens were extremely aggrieved by the citing this week of George Kruis – the England lock was subsequently cleared of a biting charge – and the effect on the individuals concerned is often underestimated. “It took probably a week to get over it and then crack on,” Ashton reveals. “I felt going to appeal was the right thing to do but after that you just have to get on with it. I might look back in a few years and still be annoyed but right now I am just looking forward to the Northampton game.”
Which brings us to the nub of Ashton’s latest attempt to reinvent himself. Having spent so long on the England fringes, has he left it too late to re‑establish himself among the world’s most predatory marksmen? Not if he can reactivate a strike-rate that bears comparison with the best – 19 tries in 39 Tests for England and 42 in 74 appearances for Saracens. A brace of tries on his Premiership comeback at Bath last Friday also suggested the old knack still lurks.
His only problem has been a tendency to waste that instinctive talent by doing something silly at critical moments, a trait that has exasperated a few coaches down the years. Jones has already described him as “mad as a cut snake” although the Saracens forwards coach, Alex Sanderson, reckons it takes one to know one. Either way, Jones sees the former Wigan man as a rare talent with a priceless gift. “Chris Ashton is still improving,” Sanderson says. “He just needs to temper his enthusiasm. The guy goes nuts because he’s emotional.
“One-on-one he’s brilliant but the more people there are around him the more ridiculous he gets. We’ve had words with him and he knows he’s got to keep a lid on it this weekend. I’m sure he’ll get a few shots.”
Ashton left Franklin’s Gardens in 2012 having played 110 games for Northampton in five years and registered almost a century of tries. This week Sanderson stirred the pot by suggesting Sarries have a problem with Northampton’s forwards coach, Dorian West – “There’s no love lost there” – but Ashton is more phlegmatic about his reunion with his former employers. “It’s been so long now. As time goes on you start to forget what happened previously. I don’t really see Northampton as that place any more. It’s more the team we’re playing against.”
At 29 he also feels a significantly better player than he was in his Saints days. “For a long time I got away with doing obvious stuff that happens quite naturally … just following players and scoring tries. It’s the other stuff, the little things, that I had to work on.”
The thought of touring Australia clearly appeals, with Jones having already dangled the carrot. “He said the door is not shut and the opportunity is still there, it’s just down to me to get back to that position.”
His immediate priority, therefore, is to keep Saracens in the hunt for European and domestic glory. Sanderson sees similarities with the successful Wasps side of a decade and a bit ago; the old sporting mantra about ‘pounding the rock’ and finally cracking the Euro summit has become Sarries’ personal mission statement.
“We all want to get to a final and go one stage further than we have in previous years,” Ashton says. “We’ve got the right experience in the team to get there again.”
The collective wave of pent-up emotion heading Northampton’s way has an ominous feel to it.
