In Defense Of A Biting, Gouging, Swan Diving Gobshite

Chris Ashton is not an easy man to like, let alone love. But as the Saracens winger takes his position on the sidelines for the 13 week duration of his latest ban, Lee Calvert make the case for why we should all try harder to do just that.

Chris Ashton: an eye-fidgeting, prop-chomping, hair-pulling, swan diving clungetrumpet who loves nothing more than to rub opposition fans the wrong way. An all round unconscionable gobshite of the worst kind.

He sits out the next three-and-a-bit months, this time for biting Northampton Saints prop Alex Waller. This is after he was banned last season for putting his hands near the eyes of an Ulster player in a European Champions Cup match. And that’s just the big stuff: he’s also generally gobby, arrogant and makes absolutely no secret of the fact that he bloody loves scoring tries and then rubbing it in the faces of the team he has scored against. What a truly terrible, awful person.

Or is he?

Ashton made one of the most difficult journeys in English rugby, moving from rugby league club Wigan Warriors at twenty years old to play for Northampton. Yes, he was well compensated, but plenty before him have done the same and failed. Instead he scored an obscene number of tries for his new rugby union team, earned an England call-up and kept on scoring at that level. As well as his very obvious talent, a huge part of what allowed him to make the transition so successfully at such a relatively tender age was the very same cockiness that he is now pilloried for. Very few were complaining about his general demeanour when he scored a glorious try vs the Wallabies in 2010, or ran in four vs Italy in the Six Nations.

It often feels like Chris Ashton is unfairly judged. Compare him to Dylan Hartley, the current England captain, who has a list of misdemeanours so long he could be a peripheral character in Goodfellas – including calling a referee a “fucking cheat” in the Premiership final – but is now being feted as a fabulous leader of England’s current new dawn. Ashton's recent infringements have arguably been harshly judged: the gouging vs Ulster was not a heinous example by anyone’s measure, and the Saracens winger was found guilty of biting Alex Waller after the Saints man had first gripped his neck and then grabbed at his face before ramming his arm into Ashton’s mouth. Is it maybe because Hartley is a union lad through and through and Ashton is a gobby northerner who came in from rugby league and remains one of the best wingers in the land?

It is this last point that people are too quick to discount, because they dislike the make-up of his character, or at least what they think they know of his character. The reality is that off the field his is charming and funny and was praised by a judge in 2012 for displaying “admirable restraint” when a stranger in a bar attempted to glass him in the face when he was out with his girlfriend.

There is an understandable tendency in rugby to want all our players to be 'decent people'. The trouble with that is that if we narrow the definition of what that means and apply so many morals to it then anyone who stands outside of it is seen as somehow wrong or questionable. Ashton is one of those people simply because he sometimes loses his temper, oversteps with his chopsy talk and celebrates to a level many find distasteful. But do we really want a game made up exclusively of Richie McCaws and Chris Robshaws? Just think how boring that would be.

Chris Ashton is a truly exceptional talent – let’s not allow a few foibles blind us to that.