1
Christian Wade to play first rugby match in four years on Saturday
By Liam Heagney
Former England international Christian Wade is set to play his first rugby match in four years when he lines out this Saturday for Racing 92 at the In Extenso SuperSevens event in Pau. The 31-year-old winger made his final appearance for Wasps in October 2018 before quitting the sport for the chance to try and make it in the NFL with Buffalo Bills.
Having returned to England earlier this summer following the expiry of his Bills contract, Wade hinted that he could make a return to rugby but the restricted Premiership market wasn’t kind to him at a time where budgets are squeezed due to the reduced salary cap.
A lifeline emerged, though, on August 18 when it was reported that Wade could potentially join Paris-based Racing as a medical joker after their new rugby league signing, St Helens' Regan Grace, suffered a ruptured achilles that will sideline him until early 2023.
The Top 14 season in France begins on the first weekend of September with Racing hosting last season’s beaten finalists Castres and the club have now decided to check out Wade as they have named him in their 15-strong squad for this Saturday’s sevens event in Pau which starts with a match versus Montpellier.
The Racing squad, which takes the field on Saturday lunchtime in the 16-team tournament, also includes Niko Matawalu, the Fijian scrum-half who played last season for Montauban in the Pro D2.
Despite not playing a rugby match in four years, Wade is still ranked as the fourth highest Premiership try-scorer of all time. His tally of 82 is 13 just tries behind Chris Ashton of Leicester who took the No1 position off Tom Varndell earlier this year.
Wade spent eight and a half seasons at Wasps, making 165 appearances for the club before trying his luck in American football. Since his return to England, he has launched a series of next-gen rugby camps aimed at upskilling young players.
Trending on RugbyPass
2
Jake White: Ireland, Australia and Wales have the same problem
3
David Campese names his Springbok world player of the year winner
4
Let's be real about these All Blacks
5
Latest Comments
Stephen Larkham, Mick Byrne, Scott Wisental, Ben Mowen, Les Kiss, Jim McKay, Rod Kafer.
There are plenty of great Australian coaches who could do a better job than Schmidt.
Go to commentsThis piece is nothing more than the result of revisionist fancy of Northern Hemisphere rugby fans. Seeing what they want to see, helped but some surprisingly good results and a desire to get excited about doing something well.
I went back through the 6N highlights and sure enough in every English win I remembered seeing these exact holes on the inside, that are supposedly the fallout out of a Felix Jones system breaking down in the hands of some replacement. Every time the commentators mentioned England being targeted up the seam/around the ruck or whatever. Each game had a try scored on the inside of the blitz, no doubt it was a theme throughout all of their games. Will Jordan specifically says that Holland had design that move to target space he saw during their home series win.
Well I'm here to tell you they were the same holes in a Felix Jones system being built as well. This woe is now sentiment has got to stop. The game is on a high, these games have been fantastic! It is Englands attack that has seen their stocks increase this year, and no doubt that is what SB told him was the teams priority. Or it's simply science, with Englands elite players having worked towards a new player welfare and management system, as part of new partnership with the ERU, that's dictating what the players can and can't put their bodies through.
The only bit of truth in this article is that Felix is not there to work on fixing his defence. England threw away another good chance of winning in the weekend when they froze all enterprise under pressure when no longer playing attacking footy for the second half. That mindset helped (or not helped if you like) of course by all this knee jerk, red brained criticism.
Go to comments