I know the games not really much about it apart from being party poopers for France, but Chris Ashton has been handed a debut start on the wing to replace Ugo Monye against France. Good to see the lad doing well, he didn't handle it well at the time he moved however he was only a naive young lad and to be honest don't blame him for increasing his salary significantly when Mo offered him peanuts.

I bet when he walks out on Saturday deep down he wishes he was still full back for the current leaders of SL.

Indeed. A real loss to our game, but fair play to the lad he has made a real go of it in union and has been rewarded with an England cap.

Hope he goes well.

bloody hell a full 60mins and this thread hasn't been blocked?

when he got in the England squad i opened a thread on here to discuss it. a few didn't like him and so the thread was locked. thank god this hasn't been.

Good news for the lad. i actually think he'll be a success too.
it'll be the first time for a very long time that i will ensure i'm sat down to watch the full 80mins of a yawnion game. hope he does well.

The last thread about him was locked (a tad pathetic really)

Im pleased for him, i found him an honest young lad who (according to him) Mo had it in for him! Rugby Union?? yes its totally dire!!

All the best to him

Good luck to him hope he does well and does our town proud. Great feat considering he's only been playing the game for a relatively short period.

His accent has come on a treat going off his sky interview earlier so he's fitting right in.

He'll have a spiffing game i'm sure.

Hope he fails and puts all league players off going to union.

He left this fine club at the first oppurtunity.

It's like an ex bird who was wife material going off with an ugly geek and then you celebrating their wedding day with Ashton playing for England RU, I say fook him!

Lmao.

He plays for Northampton. Have you ever been to Northampton?

I assure you the accents are more Uxbridge than Oxbridge. (I bet you don't get that either do you?).


Honestly, try opening your mind a bit more. Northerners don't wear flat caps and race pigeons you know (well I do ofc, but that's just me.........)

Playing infront of 80k in a international is one of the reasons he went, we cant manage to wigan on a sat afternoon and now most clubs at the other code are getting better crowds than SL clubs

It was abit of banter mate.

I'm ever so sorry it didn't meet your approval and consider me told



Sorry again boss.

Are they? Considering it's a national sport, second only maybe to football in terms of marketing, advertising and press coverage, union's club crowds have been less than impressive. With the exception of Leicester there aren't too many British club sides drawing in huge crowds. The double headers at Twickenham boost the average but I'm sure it was still only around 12,000 for the Premiership last season.
Also worth noting that the rugby league Championship and Championship 1 had a higher average attendances than their rugby union equivalents last season.

Apology accepted. Now I won't have to set my pigeon on you....

Sorry mate. That is a large pile of male cow droppings and you know it.

He went for the money, pure and simple.

He was NOT offered any promise of an England spot, and in fact he ended up playing in the 2nd division of the inferior code (imo).

He annoyed the fan base at Wigan by wearing the RU team's shirt before he'd even announced that he was leaving.

As to him playing for England - So what?
He may as well be playing for the national mixed-doubles foot-rubbing team for all I care.

And finally - A great loss to our sport - No, sorry. He was a rookie-year, reasonable fullback.
We liked him because prior to Ashton, we had been treated to such high-class backup fullbacks as Wes Davies and Denis Moran (he seemed to play there more than he should have).
Frankly, I was worried every time Radlinski left the field.

Now that he's gone - I couldn't care less TBH.
It just annoys me that some people would like us to wish him well - If you want to, that's fine. Just don't expect us all to be as forgiving to a lad who took a large cash offer and wanted us to match it for someone who had barely served the first year of his apprenticeship.

Give me Phelps, Roberts OR Richards any day of the week.

I bet he isn't.

Representing your Country at ANY sport has to better than playing for your hometown club at any other sport (well it is to me anyway)

To some people that's a viable reason and to others it's not.

If someone came along to me and said they'd double my pay for what I'm doing now, then I'd jump at the chance, and most others would.

Wigan have done the same with Union players, such as Quinnell and Inga. I didn't hear much booing of those players when they put on a Wigan shirt.

This is an eminently reasonable point to make.

Except that sport is partisan. It's all about being partisan. It would be nothing if it wasn't partisan.

So your point, reasonable as it is, won't cut much ice.

That said, I'm sure that most Wigan fans, despite Ashton's extremely impolite manner of departure, would still welcome him home if he ever decided to come (so long as he isn't in his 30s by then, of course).

Some people need to grow up a little bit here. So what if he went for the money?? He got the chance to more than double his wage and most people would jump at that, especially at his age. It was still a big decision to move away from everything he knows and now he has been proven that it was definately the right choice.

The club was in a complete mess at the time as well therefore it was pretty much a no-brainer. He's performed really well and deserves his call-up. I hope he rips it up!

If i was Ashton i would have took the money and ran, dont blame him.

I wouldnt have worn the shirt before leaving Wigan though, I suppose everyone makes mistakes. I think some people are going over the top still holding a grudge, its life at the end of the day, he had a chance to finanically secure himself in the future and he took it - most people would have. Its not like he destroyed the club or anything, he just left to play for another sport, quite a few players do that. Worst thing is that we had to endure a couple of seasons of Richie Mathers after he left



I wonder if that girl on here from a while back still has 'Ashton' tatoo'd on her wrist

Just the kind of player England ru need to inject a bit of attack into their god awful ultra defensive performances. Hopefully he'll see some ball and impress.

Couldnt give a monkeys chuff about the snotty toe rag. The bloke shat on our great club from a great height and i will never forgive him for that. And for those with Alzheimer's its got naff all to do with the money and everything to do with wearing that god awful ru shirt 6 months before the end of the season. No class.

None of these points are relevant when it comes to why Chris Ashton's name still rankles with some Wigan fans.

To deliberately not mention the thing that peed so many people off is to present a very lopsided argument.

At the time it was reported he went for £140K a year. How many players do we have with one senior season under their belt on that sort of wage? Had Mo matched the offer he would still be being slagged off for paying over the odds.

What rankles most fans isn't that he went for the cash but the manner in which he left. He knew he had done wrong and tried too hard to over compensate and didn't look as good in his last games for us anyway but whatever, he did what he did and so for ever more will be looked on with disdain by some fans.

I tend to view him as any other ex Wigan player which is sort of "Oh he used to play for us <shrugs shoulders>".

Dave

My view too.

I'm not going to get into an argument with anyone about him.

The manner of the departure - the posing in the shirt and all that - was deeply irritating at the time, a real kick in the teeth given all the other crap we were having to deal with back then - but it's over and done with. There's no point crying about spilled milk.

That said, I'd be interested if I ever heard he wanted to come back. But I can't see that happening. Unlike most who've defected to Union, Ashton appears to have fully bought into it, a la Jason Robinson.

That was certainly controversial, but I guess their marketing guys would have put him under quite a bit of pressure to wear the shirt to get that photo. As an 18/19 year old kid surrounded by all the hob-nobs of Northampton RUFC that would have been a difficult position to be put in, and I guess the longer term ramifications of it didn't immediately spring to mind.

It was an error of judgement, but not nearly as large a one as many of our other past-players have made, and I don't personally begrudge him.