Ashton resumes place as top gun in Europe
PETER JACKSON consults his stats book to reveal Europe’s top points scorers for 2017-18
Only one player has finished in the top ten of Europe’s tryscorers for each of the last seven seasons. When it comes to making a splash, nobody does it as often as Chris Ashton. England’s émigré wing finishes out in front of The Rugby Paper’s annual chart for the third time in four years, back where he first stood in 2014 and again 12 months later as joint-top with the Welsh Lion Rhys Webb who will be playing alongside him at Toulon next season.
A season when Nemani Nadolo scored 25 times for Montpellier required an extraordinary level of consistency to out-try the rampaging Fijian. Ashton managed it in some style, following a hat-trick of hat-tricks for Toulon with another at Twickenham last weekend.
He delivered it, with delicious irony, against an England XV under successive management regimes who dropped him long before Ashton’s cross-Channel move from Saracens put him officially beyond the pale. In the four years since his last Test, against New Zealand in Hamilton, Ashton has scored 78 tries at a higher strike rate than any other English player.
Since then England have preferred to pick a whole host of alternative wings – Samesa Rokoduguni, Anthony Watson, Jack Nowell, Marland Yarde, Jonny May, Elliot Daly and Denny Solomona. Even the Six Nations’ supreme finisher, Jacob Stockdale, finished in Ashton’s slipstream, some distance behind in third place despite a record ten tries in eight Tests for Ireland.
Another familiar name is to be found at the head of the points chart. Owen Farrell finishes in pole position for the second time in three seasons, reclaiming top spot from Leigh Halfpenny.
England’s captain, second behind Jonny Wilkinson six years ago at the age of 20, has finished in the Top Ten points table during six of the last seven seasons. The one exception is to be found in 2014-15 when he shared kicking duties at Saracens with Charlie Hodgson during the Yorkshireman’s valedictory season.