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Chris Ashton: 'I'd a bit of a go at Fin once and had to apologise'
By Liam Heagney
Chris Ashton had the inside track when he popped up late on the RugbyPass Zoom on Tuesday. His intel had it that Steve Borthwick was poised to bring forward his latest England team announcement.
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It meant that rather than conducting a series of planned interviews on time from home, he legged it to his car to make the one hour and 20-minute drive to Pennyhill Park to ensure he would be in position if the head coach jumped the gun with his selection. His sources were spot on. Borthwick indeed went early, revealing his match day 23 two days earlier than originally planned.
This advanced team naming was a tactic that didn’t work out well for the English in round one of the Guinness Six Nations; the head coach made his big reveal on the Tuesday and Ireland still sent them packing with a second-half surge in Dublin.
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Ashton, though, understood why the head coach was set to deploy the same ‘brought forward’ ruse heading into this Saturday’s round three encounter with Scotland. “I know (it didn’t work versus Ireland) but the issue is it gets leaked or gets told anyway,” he shrugged, downplaying its relevance.
Now working as a pundit since retiring as a player in May 2023, it was ironic that Ashton was on the line plugging the Six Nations betting markets for 10bet. He hasn’t had any luck with England’s results so far, predicting on TNT Sports before the tournament got started that Borthwick’s team would win in Ireland and lose to France.
“The first game was pretty convincing, there was no answer to that,” he accepted, holding his hand up for getting it wrong. “I am just relieved really they managed to get it done last week in a very different style. I know France could have scored this and that but I don’t believe in that.
“If France scores one of those tries, the game is different anyway. The next opportunity might not have come on the pitch, it’s just very hypothetical. But I’m just relieved they managed to get it sorted from 50 minutes on.”
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Zero from two with his forecasts, Ashton was adamant that his round three prediction would be on the money, that England will defeat the Scots for the first time since 2020. It’s a losing streak that baffles him, but he insisted that the momentum gained through defeating the French on February 8 won’t be squandered like last year’s huge win over the Irish.
That success was followed by a run of just two wins in their seven matches after, both successes coming against a struggling Japan. “England have not got much of an option (but to kick on and beat Scotland), otherwise people will say the same as what they said about the Ireland game, so all that pressure that you thought you just got rid of (against France) just comes back on again.
“It’s not ideal having the fallow weekend; I’d rather they got back into it again although some of the lads were walking off the pitch in bits so probably not a bad thing for them. But you have got to back that win up. Not only that, we can’t be the only team in history to get beat by Scotland five times in a row.
“It’s not just a ‘let’s make sure we back up the France thing here’, there is a lot going on in between. Getting beaten by Scotland so many times, being back at home – they have to win. Not only for their own record this year but also for the history records.”
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The Scots come into the Twickenham encounter having stank out Murrayfield with their latest meek surrender to Ireland. “That must be so frustrating for Gregor (Townsend). Last week played out slightly differently with the injuries and stuff, so it was hard for them to get going.
How will England perform at this year's Six Nations? ? @ChrisAshton1 makes his predictions ? pic.twitter.com/GQycxDG04n
— Rugby on TNT Sports (@rugbyontnt) January 27, 2025
“But Ireland never left them into the game and England need to do exactly the same, start so fast that Scotland don’t know where to go or how to stop it. Ireland did really well in slowing Scotland down, which will be a concern for Gregor and something Steve will look at.
“Their forwards also struggled to get gain line against Italy, and if you can’t get gain line then your backs have got no chance. You can have all these amazing backs but you can’t use them if your forwards aren’t going forward.
“That will be key for Steve and something England did really well against France was keeping the middle of the field solid. All France’s chances were out wide. If you keep the Scotland pack contained and not allow front foot ball, you will restrict their chances out wide.
“You know the finishers they have got out there can be devastating if you give them an opportunity and they won’t do what France did [not take chances], so the key for England is controlling the forwards and controlling the breakdown.
“I am going with England. I don’t think anyone in that camp wants the unwanted, never been done, beat by Scotland five times label. They have got to take a lot from that, and there will be a lot of positive from that and a lot of positive energy from the France game too.”
Of great importance to England will be the performance of Fin Smith. The rookie out-half was excellent last time out on his first Test start, even taking over the place-kicking duties from the wayward Marcus Smith to help seal the 26-25 win.
??????? The @EnglandRugby side to take on Scotland in the Calcutta Cup ?#GuinnessM6N pic.twitter.com/Hmmykvj4le
— Guinness Men's Six Nations (@SixNationsRugby) February 18, 2025
The Northampton player is only 22 and while Ashton is already nearly two years retired following his career-finishing two-season stint at Leicester, Smith is a former team-mate of his from their Worcester days.
Ashton only made four appearances for the now defunct Sixways outfit, but one of those games – the March 2021 Gallagher Premiership loss at Bath – was Smith’s first top-flight start and the retired winger has revealed he has to apologise post-game to the then-teenager.
“Really, really intelligent, level-headed kid. Almost like 10 years above his age, even when he was 18. I had a bit of a go at him once on the pitch, on his debut actually, and I had to apologise after. He was doing what any 18-year-old kid would do, he would follow what the coach said to the absolute nth but you can’t play rugby like that. He will definitely know that now.
“But he wouldn’t change anything and what I was trying to explain, probably in the wrong way, was we have to be adaptable, we have to do things on the run in the game and if something is not going well, he as the fly-half has to be able to change that.
“He has done that Northampton. Going there has been a masterstroke really with what they did last year getting the title win. He manages games there. He is so different from when he made his debut at Worcester. A really good kid, honest kid, and just plays rugby really nicely.”
Smith’s promotion to a starting role with England was a year in the making as his previous seven caps were as a sub behind either George Ford or Marcus Smith. Ashton explains why his elevation took so long. “It was probably hard for Steve at first because Fin’s X-factor is managing a team so if you have got something that screams out going we need speed or we need this player to break up the game, that’s not really Fin.
? @sageuk Play of the Round
? Alex Mitchell throws a 8m pass at 34.6kph to Fin Smith who changes direction to send the 23.5m cross-field kick to Tommy Freeman who catches it after a 2.7s hangtime to score the try for England ?#SageInsights pic.twitter.com/LrOlXjAPao
— Guinness Men's Six Nations (@SixNationsRugby) February 9, 2025
“Fin is pulling people together, putting them into space, time of pass, time on the ball. All those attributes that for a coach might be harder to get his head around and buy into in a younger kid, especially when you have got Marcus Smith knocking around as well. It’s like, ‘You have to use Marcus’.
“But Fin, that is his super strength [pulling people together]. I am so glad he got the chance to get in there and get it going and he didn’t really look out of place. Aside from getting charged down early on which is acceptable, not realising how fast the game is from the start, but he settled really quickly.”
Mention of Borthwick, he and Ashton became teammates at Saracens after they missed out on playing together with England (Ashton’s 2010 debut came in the game after Borthwick’s final cap). Ashton then has Borthwick coach him as an England assistant in 2018/19 and then as his boss at Leicester. What does he genuinely make of his former colleague?
“I have not come across many if any coaches who apply themselves so wholeheartedly to their environment and their team like Steve does. He is a good on-field coach; he never switches off from it which is why most people who have been under him go, ‘Yeah, he is an outstanding coach’. The level of detail he goes to, there is not many similar.
“I mean, we are seeing it more and more now with Paul O’Connell and those kinds of coaches coming through, the role of a similar ilk where they are GPS and training/games review obsessed. Steve is exactly one of those moulds.
“I really enjoyed his coaching when I was at Leicester with him. I don’t know how he did it but he managed to find a theme every week of how he was going to speak and how he would get his messaging to the team and into the game all linked in. I wouldn’t even begin to know how to start doing something like that but every week it was like that.
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“It was an easy thing for me to buy in because the clarity was given to you and the important thing for the players is yes the coaches and Steve can give you all the clarity and all the detail you want but you have still got to be the player that you were that got you there in the first place.
“You can’t take all the information in and think your job is going to be done – it’s not. You take the information and apply your game to the pitch. They both need to interlink together, you can’t just expect Steve to give you all the answers.”
What about the avalanche of media and public criticism Borthwick was under until England’s win at the death over France? “He definitely knows, he is fully aware as to what is going on because he will feel a duty of care to the team and representing them and all of that that goes with it, so he has an emotional tie to it all.
“If you are doing well people are happy, everyone in the team is happy and it is all interlinked. So if that is not going well and you are not getting results, it has the opposite effect so you become more and more aware of what is going on.
“At the same time you have got to be able to cut it out, you have got to be able to completely cut it out of your life or mind space because you have got a job to do in coaching. It’s a hard job. It’s not one I would look forward to doing, to emotionally put things in boxes and concentrate on your job.”
Twenty-one months after his last appearance for Leicester, the soon-to-be 38-year-old Ashton has enjoyed his transition away from playing. “Body is okay. I miss the day-to-day, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t miss the contact of it when I am watching now.
“I have been fortunate to get in and around the TV and the radio stuff so it keeps me close enough to the action where I get to feel it, see it and smell it every week so I get my fix every week fortunately. If I didn’t have that I don’t know what I would be doing, but that is enough for me to sustain the connection part of it and not be completely away from it.”
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