I enjoyed reading this one:
Do you know the problem with Chris Ashton? He thinks he's normal.
He believed his dreams were those of every teenager. He thinks to realise them - not all of them so far, mind you - was always going to happen.
'In my mind, this was what I was going to do,' he said.
'There would be no point in playing otherwise, would there? No point if you didn't have these aspirations. I would play at Twickenham, score hat-tricks, score length-of-the-pitch tries for England. I wouldn't have bothered if I didn't think that. Don't all kids think that? Every kid going to Twickenham on Saturday will think that.'
No messing: Ashton relaxes in the hotel room he shares with Foden
It is explained, as gently as possible, that no, all kids do not think of breaking a championship record that has stood for 97 years; that most dream of playing for the school, or the county, or in the Premiership or, if miracles happen, for England.
That they do not then extrapolate this vision to include the most audacious try of recent memory, against Australia, or to rewriting historic almanac entries that have remained intact since before the First World War.
'Well, that part of me will never change,' Ashton replies, breezily. 'I still think of it like a child, still have those dreams that I know I can achieve. I never think, "I am definitely going to score four tries today", because it tends not to happen' - you've got to love that 'tends' - 'but wanting to do it? Sure. So I'm not surprising myself. I always believed this was possible.'
He notices the widened eyes. 'Is that the right thing to say?'
Of course it is, because it comes from the heart. As does Ashton's rugby, even its controversial excesses. The swallow-dive tries are, thankfully, not the invention of a clever marketing department but an expression of pure joy at achieving the point of the game. Accusations of triumphalism or commercialism are sincerely rebutted.
Will he do it against France on Saturday? Let us hope so. If Ashton swallow dives over the line at Twickenham it will mean he has the time and space to do so, and the much vaunted attempts to stifle his game have failed.
'Maybe I'll stand on the wing and just dot it down,' he says. But his parting words to our photographer suggest he won't.
Trademark: Ashton gleefully dives in to score a try against Italy at Twickenham two weeks ago
Ashton has divided opinion in rugby, a sport still wrestling with the new frontiers of professionalism. Old sweats preferred try scorers to offer a manly handshake and return to the restart with nothing showier than a thin-lipped smile. To see Ashton salute the crowd before the ball has been grounded and then pitch forward in a balletic arc before meeting the turf is anathema to many.
They haven't seen the half of it. When England won the Rugby World Cup in 2003, the hero of the hour was Jonny Wilkinson, the consummate buttoned-down professional. This is World Cup year too, and with England coming to the boil under Martin Johnson, winger Ashton, by contrast, is Gazza. Not in that painful, lonely, ruinous way, but in his capacity to capture the imagination of the people, drawing in those who had previously avoided his sport.
Ashton has the potential to bring rugby to the masses. This may be a horrid thought for some, who fear the sport will change for ever. But it is true. 'Paul Gascoigne? You think I'll go off the rails?' he asks.
'It's a big question whether rugby is ready for it, whether I am ready for it. All I would say is that whatever it takes to make England successful, if that is the effect I have, if it makes rugby a bigger game and gets more kids involved, so be it. But it is not my intention to make myself famous on that scale. It wasn't Jonny's intention, either.
'The dive just happened. I haven't thought about it too much, but I am beginning to understand that some of what I do challenges the old-fashioned principles of rugby union. Maybe coming in from rugby league I don't have the understanding of what putting the ball down like that against Wales in Cardiff means. I'm just in my own little bubble, my own little world.
All smiles: Ashton with Wilkinson during an England training session on Thursday
'Perhaps that is for the best. If you start thinking about it too much, you start responding to what people want you to do. Maybe that is what Martin Johnson is worried about, this becoming something separate from the team. I will never do the dive because people are thinking, "Do the dive, do the dive". It has got to be related to the game, and to how I feel.
If it is taken out of context, if it just becomes this big individual thing, I'd lose interest in it. It must be based on pure emotion. If I have to think about doing it there would be no reason for it at all. I wouldn't want that.
'The more it gets talked about, the more I think about dropping it and I know I'm doing myself in by saying this, but I'm confident I'm never going to drop the ball. Mark Cueto says I'll never drop it, too, but Ben Foden doesn't shut up about it, taking the mick. He calls it the Ash Splash and shows me these football celebrations on YouTube.
'There's one where a bloke mimes casting a rod and his mate is on the floor pretending to be a fish and he comes wriggling over and then five of them pick him up and act as if they are having their picture taken. The rest of the team are just jogging back to the middle wondering what the hell is going on. In another one, two guys crouch down and one sits on top and pretends to be riding a bicycle. It's hilarious. I can't see that happening in rugby, though. I think the players would have a way of sorting you out if you pulled that stunt. There are enough issues with the swallow dive.
Finest hour (so far): Ashton breaks away to score his unforgettable try against Australia back in November
'One Italian lad got really wound up. I think he had been reading too many papers judging by the way he came after me under the posts. He seemed really annoyed. But I don't see it had anything to do with him. There's no disrespect.
'I remember being 90-0 up in Division One with Northampton and I took a kick at goal and I can see how some people thought that was a bit much, but at Twickenham in an international in front of so many people when it's all so new to me? You just have to let that energy and passion out. It just explodes because that's what you've been waiting for, that moment. And it's not going to come around very often. A lot of people will never get that chance in their life.
'I still get criticised by some for scoring my first Test try in Australia and running off like Alan Shearer, but I'm telling you, I could have run all night after that. There is a time and a place and, when you've scored, that is the time and the place.'
Saturday's match will be a test, for England under Johnson and for Ashton personally. He is arguably the most discussed player in rugby union right now and much has been made of France's plans to stop him.
If they succeed, many will seek to re-evaluate the impact Ashton could have on this year's World Cup. If he maintains his current trajectory, expectations will rise sky-high.
'We'll know more after this weekend,' he says, matter-of-factly. 'We could be sat here next week having a totally different conversation. If they stop me, we'll have to look at how they did it. I'm quite looking forward to seeing what they are going to do actually because they've promised something, haven't they? They say they stopped Jason Robinson, but they didn't. They tried to take him out and lost the game.
<iframe ***le="YouTube video player" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/XRpzejrMlEo" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="390" width="640"></iframe>
'It's different now anyway. Referees have help and are completely in control so that cannot happen so much. If France want to start doing daft tricks they will lose, so that's fine, too.
'I won't change how I play either way. I can't. I'll always want to get after the ball. It's been going on for a while, people talking about these support lines that I run, but it has never had any effect on us, so why would it now?
'Unless they go down the line of trying to trip me I don't know what this plan can be. And if they trip me, the whole thing has been highlighted pre-game so it is going to get noticed pretty quickly. That works in my favour, too. Look, if I don't know where I'm going to go, how can they know? I might even study what I did when I finish playing because I certainly can't explain when I am doing it.
'People think about my game in a more technical way than I do. I'm just out there, enjoying what comes naturally. There's no technical consideration at all. I've never really been told anything about supporting runs by coaches. It's just something I do, I run across the pitch, hoping someone will make a break because I know the full back will be there and they will have to give it to me to score. It is like an addiction, if I am honest about it, the want, the need to score tries. I was the same at 16. I'd chase anything just to get on the end of a try.'
Back in the league days: Ashton on his way to scoring a try for Wigan against Bradford in 2006
A Wigan lad, the preferred sport of the teenage Ashton was rugby league. His father played the rival code, but junior was positively contemptuous of it.
'I never watched rugby union,' he adds. 'I vaguely remember England winning the World Cup in 2003 because it put rugby union on the map in England. It was nothing until then, really, was it? And then it was everywhere. My dad had played it for 20 years but I never understood what he was doing.
'The Wigan rugby team I knew played at Central Park on a Friday night. I think I watched the World Cup final. I'm not sure, though. It meant nothing to me. All I remember is Jonny took it on his wrong foot when he made the winning kick. The rest of the game? Nothing. The other matches, the group games, they're all a blank. I was 16 but I never paid any attention to it at all.
'Some League people don't realise. They think it looks easy on telly. I used to as well. "Just pass it there and you'll score". Nobody has any idea. They don't understand it, so they don't want to know. No interest and I've been there, I was exactly the same.
'I used to think they were all rubbish, rugby union players. There's space, that's all some rugby league people see. They don't know it's impossible to get it over there. I used to turn rugby union off when it came on television. I'd think, "Ah, they're not doing anything right". Now my perception is completely changed. I've still got mates who think that way. I was in the gym last week and a bloke said to me, "It's easy that union, isn't it? It's rubbish. Not interested". He genuinely believed it.
Switching codes: Ashton races away to score a try for Northampton against Wasps in 2008
'They all think they could give it a go, no trouble. I still thought like that when I was about to play for Northampton the first time. And then the Premiership came and - boom. It shot me straight down to ground. No time, no space, no idea of what to do on the ball, no idea about defence, just a massive shock, really. Going from National Division One to the Premiership was like moving from seven-a-side to 15. I had to learn because I hadn't been challenged.
'I thought I was going to fail at this. I would be on the phone to my dad for hours. I was a different person, not just a different player. More introverted, angrier. My confidence was bottled up and bottled up and I was nearly going back to league. Then I played at Gloucester, first start in a long time, and we won. I just made sure that I wouldn't do anything wrong that day. That was what my coaches were worried about, all the mistakes, so I made sure I did only what I needed to do and it worked and I carried on like that. Then my confidence grew and I started seeing the game.'
The rest you know. From there it was a hop and a skip to dreams of pitch-length tries and record books rewritten, and from there a swift swallow dive to making this a reality. And as we leave, English rugby's man of the moment is, whisper it, going to get his hair cut in readiness to meet the BBC.
Ashton, Danny Care and Ben Foden play spin the credit card and Ashton loses so his tidy trim costs just over £100. But before rugby's old guard has conniptions of the football-style excess, think of it like this: a little bit new school getting crimped for the cameras, true; but a little bit old school, too, wanting to look neat.
He has something for everyone, Chris Ashton. He is what he is: a natural talent, and a natural star
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/ru...s-addiction--Martin-Samuel.html#ixzz1ExTBSEYT
Do you know the problem with Chris Ashton? He thinks he's normal.
He believed his dreams were those of every teenager. He thinks to realise them - not all of them so far, mind you - was always going to happen.
'In my mind, this was what I was going to do,' he said.
'There would be no point in playing otherwise, would there? No point if you didn't have these aspirations. I would play at Twickenham, score hat-tricks, score length-of-the-pitch tries for England. I wouldn't have bothered if I didn't think that. Don't all kids think that? Every kid going to Twickenham on Saturday will think that.'
No messing: Ashton relaxes in the hotel room he shares with Foden
It is explained, as gently as possible, that no, all kids do not think of breaking a championship record that has stood for 97 years; that most dream of playing for the school, or the county, or in the Premiership or, if miracles happen, for England.
That they do not then extrapolate this vision to include the most audacious try of recent memory, against Australia, or to rewriting historic almanac entries that have remained intact since before the First World War.
'Well, that part of me will never change,' Ashton replies, breezily. 'I still think of it like a child, still have those dreams that I know I can achieve. I never think, "I am definitely going to score four tries today", because it tends not to happen' - you've got to love that 'tends' - 'but wanting to do it? Sure. So I'm not surprising myself. I always believed this was possible.'
He notices the widened eyes. 'Is that the right thing to say?'
Of course it is, because it comes from the heart. As does Ashton's rugby, even its controversial excesses. The swallow-dive tries are, thankfully, not the invention of a clever marketing department but an expression of pure joy at achieving the point of the game. Accusations of triumphalism or commercialism are sincerely rebutted.
Will he do it against France on Saturday? Let us hope so. If Ashton swallow dives over the line at Twickenham it will mean he has the time and space to do so, and the much vaunted attempts to stifle his game have failed.
'Maybe I'll stand on the wing and just dot it down,' he says. But his parting words to our photographer suggest he won't.
Trademark: Ashton gleefully dives in to score a try against Italy at Twickenham two weeks ago
Ashton has divided opinion in rugby, a sport still wrestling with the new frontiers of professionalism. Old sweats preferred try scorers to offer a manly handshake and return to the restart with nothing showier than a thin-lipped smile. To see Ashton salute the crowd before the ball has been grounded and then pitch forward in a balletic arc before meeting the turf is anathema to many.
They haven't seen the half of it. When England won the Rugby World Cup in 2003, the hero of the hour was Jonny Wilkinson, the consummate buttoned-down professional. This is World Cup year too, and with England coming to the boil under Martin Johnson, winger Ashton, by contrast, is Gazza. Not in that painful, lonely, ruinous way, but in his capacity to capture the imagination of the people, drawing in those who had previously avoided his sport.
Ashton has the potential to bring rugby to the masses. This may be a horrid thought for some, who fear the sport will change for ever. But it is true. 'Paul Gascoigne? You think I'll go off the rails?' he asks.
'It's a big question whether rugby is ready for it, whether I am ready for it. All I would say is that whatever it takes to make England successful, if that is the effect I have, if it makes rugby a bigger game and gets more kids involved, so be it. But it is not my intention to make myself famous on that scale. It wasn't Jonny's intention, either.
'The dive just happened. I haven't thought about it too much, but I am beginning to understand that some of what I do challenges the old-fashioned principles of rugby union. Maybe coming in from rugby league I don't have the understanding of what putting the ball down like that against Wales in Cardiff means. I'm just in my own little bubble, my own little world.
All smiles: Ashton with Wilkinson during an England training session on Thursday
'Perhaps that is for the best. If you start thinking about it too much, you start responding to what people want you to do. Maybe that is what Martin Johnson is worried about, this becoming something separate from the team. I will never do the dive because people are thinking, "Do the dive, do the dive". It has got to be related to the game, and to how I feel.
If it is taken out of context, if it just becomes this big individual thing, I'd lose interest in it. It must be based on pure emotion. If I have to think about doing it there would be no reason for it at all. I wouldn't want that.
'The more it gets talked about, the more I think about dropping it and I know I'm doing myself in by saying this, but I'm confident I'm never going to drop the ball. Mark Cueto says I'll never drop it, too, but Ben Foden doesn't shut up about it, taking the mick. He calls it the Ash Splash and shows me these football celebrations on YouTube.
'There's one where a bloke mimes casting a rod and his mate is on the floor pretending to be a fish and he comes wriggling over and then five of them pick him up and act as if they are having their picture taken. The rest of the team are just jogging back to the middle wondering what the hell is going on. In another one, two guys crouch down and one sits on top and pretends to be riding a bicycle. It's hilarious. I can't see that happening in rugby, though. I think the players would have a way of sorting you out if you pulled that stunt. There are enough issues with the swallow dive.
Finest hour (so far): Ashton breaks away to score his unforgettable try against Australia back in November
'One Italian lad got really wound up. I think he had been reading too many papers judging by the way he came after me under the posts. He seemed really annoyed. But I don't see it had anything to do with him. There's no disrespect.
'I remember being 90-0 up in Division One with Northampton and I took a kick at goal and I can see how some people thought that was a bit much, but at Twickenham in an international in front of so many people when it's all so new to me? You just have to let that energy and passion out. It just explodes because that's what you've been waiting for, that moment. And it's not going to come around very often. A lot of people will never get that chance in their life.
'I still get criticised by some for scoring my first Test try in Australia and running off like Alan Shearer, but I'm telling you, I could have run all night after that. There is a time and a place and, when you've scored, that is the time and the place.'
Saturday's match will be a test, for England under Johnson and for Ashton personally. He is arguably the most discussed player in rugby union right now and much has been made of France's plans to stop him.
If they succeed, many will seek to re-evaluate the impact Ashton could have on this year's World Cup. If he maintains his current trajectory, expectations will rise sky-high.
'We'll know more after this weekend,' he says, matter-of-factly. 'We could be sat here next week having a totally different conversation. If they stop me, we'll have to look at how they did it. I'm quite looking forward to seeing what they are going to do actually because they've promised something, haven't they? They say they stopped Jason Robinson, but they didn't. They tried to take him out and lost the game.
<iframe ***le="YouTube video player" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/XRpzejrMlEo" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="390" width="640"></iframe>
'It's different now anyway. Referees have help and are completely in control so that cannot happen so much. If France want to start doing daft tricks they will lose, so that's fine, too.
'I won't change how I play either way. I can't. I'll always want to get after the ball. It's been going on for a while, people talking about these support lines that I run, but it has never had any effect on us, so why would it now?
'Unless they go down the line of trying to trip me I don't know what this plan can be. And if they trip me, the whole thing has been highlighted pre-game so it is going to get noticed pretty quickly. That works in my favour, too. Look, if I don't know where I'm going to go, how can they know? I might even study what I did when I finish playing because I certainly can't explain when I am doing it.
'People think about my game in a more technical way than I do. I'm just out there, enjoying what comes naturally. There's no technical consideration at all. I've never really been told anything about supporting runs by coaches. It's just something I do, I run across the pitch, hoping someone will make a break because I know the full back will be there and they will have to give it to me to score. It is like an addiction, if I am honest about it, the want, the need to score tries. I was the same at 16. I'd chase anything just to get on the end of a try.'
Back in the league days: Ashton on his way to scoring a try for Wigan against Bradford in 2006
A Wigan lad, the preferred sport of the teenage Ashton was rugby league. His father played the rival code, but junior was positively contemptuous of it.
'I never watched rugby union,' he adds. 'I vaguely remember England winning the World Cup in 2003 because it put rugby union on the map in England. It was nothing until then, really, was it? And then it was everywhere. My dad had played it for 20 years but I never understood what he was doing.
'The Wigan rugby team I knew played at Central Park on a Friday night. I think I watched the World Cup final. I'm not sure, though. It meant nothing to me. All I remember is Jonny took it on his wrong foot when he made the winning kick. The rest of the game? Nothing. The other matches, the group games, they're all a blank. I was 16 but I never paid any attention to it at all.
'Some League people don't realise. They think it looks easy on telly. I used to as well. "Just pass it there and you'll score". Nobody has any idea. They don't understand it, so they don't want to know. No interest and I've been there, I was exactly the same.
'I used to think they were all rubbish, rugby union players. There's space, that's all some rugby league people see. They don't know it's impossible to get it over there. I used to turn rugby union off when it came on television. I'd think, "Ah, they're not doing anything right". Now my perception is completely changed. I've still got mates who think that way. I was in the gym last week and a bloke said to me, "It's easy that union, isn't it? It's rubbish. Not interested". He genuinely believed it.
Switching codes: Ashton races away to score a try for Northampton against Wasps in 2008
'They all think they could give it a go, no trouble. I still thought like that when I was about to play for Northampton the first time. And then the Premiership came and - boom. It shot me straight down to ground. No time, no space, no idea of what to do on the ball, no idea about defence, just a massive shock, really. Going from National Division One to the Premiership was like moving from seven-a-side to 15. I had to learn because I hadn't been challenged.
'I thought I was going to fail at this. I would be on the phone to my dad for hours. I was a different person, not just a different player. More introverted, angrier. My confidence was bottled up and bottled up and I was nearly going back to league. Then I played at Gloucester, first start in a long time, and we won. I just made sure that I wouldn't do anything wrong that day. That was what my coaches were worried about, all the mistakes, so I made sure I did only what I needed to do and it worked and I carried on like that. Then my confidence grew and I started seeing the game.'
The rest you know. From there it was a hop and a skip to dreams of pitch-length tries and record books rewritten, and from there a swift swallow dive to making this a reality. And as we leave, English rugby's man of the moment is, whisper it, going to get his hair cut in readiness to meet the BBC.
Ashton, Danny Care and Ben Foden play spin the credit card and Ashton loses so his tidy trim costs just over £100. But before rugby's old guard has conniptions of the football-style excess, think of it like this: a little bit new school getting crimped for the cameras, true; but a little bit old school, too, wanting to look neat.
He has something for everyone, Chris Ashton. He is what he is: a natural talent, and a natural star
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/ru...s-addiction--Martin-Samuel.html#ixzz1ExTBSEYT
