Ashe sad to leave Scotstoun but plans to strike oil
Former Glasgow back row focuses on CBD
ADAM ASHE makes no bones about his disappointment of his time as a Glasgow Warriors player coming to a premature end last week despite having a year to run on his existing contract,. But the 27- year- old back- rower says he harbours no hard feelings towards the club, or towards new head coach Danny Wilson who decided that he was surplus to requirements, and he is determined to turn the set- back into a positive.
“I’m sad to be going, I’ve had a lengthy time at the club and it is all I have really known since leaving school – I’ve never done anything else – but I am very excited about what’s to come in the future,” he stated.
“By no means am I hanging up my boots. My intention is to continue playing professional rugby and I’m really looking forward to what is coming next. I’ve been a one club man so there is a refreshing aspect to this. The way the market is at the moment, it is difficult to pick things up, but I’m confident that I’ll find something.
“I’m in talks with a few other clubs. It will probably be overseas. There is some decent interest but nothing has been confirmed. I’m keen to ensure that it aligns with all the other stuff that I’ve got going on off the field.”
As he is currently recovering from shoulder surgery, Ashe will not be able to start training or playing until the start of October, which can’t have helped his hunt for new employers, but he is fairly relaxed about the situation and focussing instead on the business he set up with former clubmate Grayson Hart two years ago supplying CBD [ cannabidiol] oil to fellow athletes to help them cope with the stresses and strains of high level sport.
“One of the frustrating things about playing at Glasgow the last couple of years is that I’ve had a business venture on the side which I feel very passionate about but I’ve not been able to speak about it based on a blanket ban put on players endorsing certain things,” he explained.
“The business is Pure Sports CBD which offers products for athletes that are different from other brands. A lot of research and studies show that
CBD can have a lot of benefits for athletes with things like anxiety, recovering from injury and helping with sleep.”
Scottish Rugby’s anxiety about one of their players promoting CBD appears to centre around the fact that the compound is found in the hemp variety of cannabis plants, which contains very low amounts of THC, the psychoactive component of cannabis which gets users high. Crucially, however, CBD is a non- psychoactive compound so it does not appear to put the user at risk of addiction.
Ashe first became aware of the product when struggling with an ankle injury two years ago. He was still in considerable pain after two surgeries and decided to try out this miracle cure from America he had heard about.
“Within three or four days I started to see a big improvement in my ankle, which meant I could start using less anti- inflammatories and pain killers,” he explained. “But after a few weeks of me talking about it to my team- mates and the physios at Glasgow, I was told that I needed to be really careful because it can have a banned substances in it, so it was at that point that Grayson – who had been using it at the same time as me for arthritis in his knee – and I thought: what if we can make this product accessible to athletes with guaranteed purity?
“We went on a bit of a mission, contacting manufacturers all over the world to see if they could make this bespoke potion for people in sport. We eventually found someone who could make the product and guarantee that it was safe, and that’s when we launched the brand Pure Sport CBD.”
Now he is on a mission to get the word out about a product he clearly believes passionately in. He is adamant that wherever he ends up playing his rugby next, his business interests will not be pushed to the side.