Wade on 97 as opening round of Premiership produces record 52 tries
Christian Wade scored two tries but Newcastle Red Bulls were beaten 59-26 by Northampton Saints in the opening week of the Premiership season, and the round produced a record 52 tries across five matches.
The 35-year-old Wade now has 97 Premiership tries, four short of Chris Ashton’s record total of 101, with his career tries split between Wasps, Gloucester and Newcastle. He returned to rugby union last December with Newcastle after a short spell in rugby league with Wigan Warriors and had publicly expressed a desire to chase Ashton's tally. Wade added only two tries last season as the Red Bulls struggled at the bottom of the table, but he began this campaign with a brace away to the champions.
More than 15 years after scoring his first Premiership try for Wasps, Wade’s work at Franklin's Gardens displayed the speed and slipperiness that have defined his career. "Christian bounces across in front of people where they can't lay a finger on him," Red Bulls head coach Dan McFarland told BBC Sport. That burst and evasiveness helped him cross twice despite Newcastle’s heavy defeat.
McFarland offered further praise for Wade's professionalism and influence within the squad. "Christian Wade is a proper professional," said McFarland. "He spent a few years in the NFL and he's clearly taken a lot from that experience in terms of how to look after himself and how to prepare himself as a rugby player." "Christian's in our leadership group because of his capacity to be able to connect with people. He's a really good person."
The opening round averaged more than 10 tries per game and featured four players recording hat-tricks, providing an unusually high-scoring start to the season. Tommy Freeman began his campaign with a hat-trick in the same match as Wade's double, taking his career total to 58 at the age of 25. Last season's top try scorers, Northampton and England's Tommy Freeman and Saracens' teenage starlet Noah Caluori, both finished on 18 tries — the highest season total for five years — and Caluori's haul included him scoring five tries in a match on two occasions against Sale Sharks. Tommy Freeman has reached double figures for tries in three of the past five Premiership seasons for Northampton.
All-time Premiership try totals list as follows: 101 - Chris Ashton (Northampton, Saracens, Sale, Harlequins, Worcester, Leicester); 97 - Christian Wade (Wasps, Gloucester, Newcastle); 92 - Tom Varndell (Leicester, Wasps, Bristol). 90 - Mark Cueto (Sale); 85 - Danny Care (Leeds, Harlequins); 78 - Jonny May (Gloucester, Leicester). 75 - Steve Hanley (Sale); 72 - Mike Brown (Harlequins, Newcastle, Leicester); 71 - Matt Banahan (Bath, Gloucester); 69 - Paul Sackey (Bedford, London Irish, Wasps, Harlequins).
Chris Ashton addressed the prospect of his record being surpassed on BBC's Rugby Union Weekly podcast. "It's happening [the record being broken], but it's not going to last long, whoever takes it," he said. "I think it's going to be absolutely blown to smithereens. "I sat there on Friday and watched Tommy run in another hat-trick and thought he's going to get 20 this year. "Give him another five or six years at this rate that we're going, oh my goodness. He's 25 and he's on 58! By the age of 30, he'll have 100 plus. "Christian Wade is missing more tries per game than he is scoring tries but that probably shows where Newcastle's mindset is."
Wade's playing career has included a spell in France with Racing 92 in the Top 14, time in the 13-man code with Wigan and more than three years in the NFL with the Buffalo Bills, although he never made it into their main squad. Those moves form part of a globetrotting 15-year career that has seen him play across multiple codes and competitions.
Newcastle next face Leicester Tigers on Saturday, 3 October at 19:45 BST, with commentary available from BBC Radio Newcastle and BBC Radio Leicester.